“No.” She rolled her eyes as if this was the most absurd thing she’d ever heard. “It’s not what this is about. You’re the one talking about being truthful. All I’m saying is that it’s not black-and-white.”
“It’s not black-and-white. I agree. But that doesn’t mean that you were right to not tell us about Alex. I want you to know you can talk to me, Jess. I know things have been—”
“Can we not talk about it? I said it wasn’t a big deal. He’s going to college and I probably won’t ever see him again, so it’s not worth talking about. Okay?”
Her face was blotchy. She was on the verge of tears from the pitch of her voice. I wanted to put my arms around her. Erase the past year for her. Undo all the sadness that was etched in her face.
When I stood, she walked to the doorway and put her hand on the doorknob.
“Can I go? Bets is expecting me.”
I nodded, and she was gone, her footsteps heavy on the stairs.
I sat in the chair and looked at the door. I’d been foolish to think that Jess wouldn’t have struggled at some point with what we told Kat. In some ways, I felt that I’d let the fact that Jess had always been so mature, so levelheaded, convince me that she’d come to me if she needed to talk about it.
Or maybe it was that we’d always been so close.
Jack thought it was all those years Jess and I had alone together. Eight years before Kat was born.
Not that we’d planned it that way. Jack and I tried for another child when Jess was three. It took more than two years, and then I miscarried in the tenth week. We took a break after that.
After Kat was born, we thought we were done having kids. We’d had such a hard time conceiving Kat, and the doctor said my chances of getting pregnant were slim—so slim, we didn’t even bother with birth control—and then years passed, and there was that hot, humid night at the Salt House when Jack had pulled the mattress down to the screen porch and we made love. And Maddie had come along.
I walked over to the phone and called Peggy.
“I have some news,” I said when she answered. “It seems as if Alex and Jess have met.”
“Oh, I know,” she said breezily. “I saw them talking outside the house in the beginning of the summer. Jess was riding her bike or something. I wanted to go out and formally introduce them, but I didn’t want to be the uncool mother.”
I cleared my throat. “I think they have moved past just meeting.”
“Huh?”
“They might have even moved past just friends.”
There was a pause. “Hope, I’m confused,” she said. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” I admitted. “I just found out. Jess has a little sister who adores her—a little sister who also happened upon some information that her sister had a boyfriend.”
“A boyfriend!” Peggy shouted. “I’ve never heard him mention her name!”
“Apparently they have lunch together every day in the parking lot near the camp. Kat saw them.”
“Every day!”
“I’m sure they’re just friends. Honestly, Jess is not exactly experienced with boys. Jack is strict to the point of crazy—it’s something we fight about, and he’s never been able to explain it. I actually told Jess last year to come to me if she ever wants to go to the movies with someone. But she’s never mentioned Alex, and she was defensive just now when I asked about him. The only thing I got out of her was that it’s no big deal.”
“I’m sure they’re just friends,” Peggy said. “Alex has been serious with a girl back home for ages. But I’ll talk to him and get the scoop, I promise.”
We hung up, and I dialed Jack’s cell. It rang once before I changed my mind and ended the call. There was no sense in bringing this up with him now. Jess didn’t need him asking her about it. Jack could never explain to me why he had such an issue with her dating. I should have pushed the issue with him. But she’d never shown much interest in dating anyone specific until now. If she was even interested in dating Alex, for that matter. It wasn’t clear from our conversation.
Plus, if I called Jack and he answered, I had a feeling I’d hear him cough, and I didn’t think I’d be able to stop myself from lecturing him.
He’d been hot to the touch last night again. I’d asked him to stay home when he was getting dressed for work this morning. But he’d insisted that he was fine, just run-down from the hours he was putting in. I dropped it and turned over and went to sleep. Because the hours he was putting in was another argument we’d had over the last year that we’d silently agreed to stop having. By this I mean we avoided the conversation.
How many times can you argue about something before you decide that the argument is more destructive than the thing you’re arguing about?
It went the same every time, this fight. Jack went to work when things were difficult at home, and I resented it. That was a boiled-down version. But there were valid points on each side. Every good fight that has the ability to last more than twenty years has validity.
Jack argued that working the hours he did was justified because he liked to work alone, without a stern man. It took him longer to do what he needed to do because there was only one of him.
It wasn’t true, I’d counter. Over the years, he’d cut back the number of traps he fished, and it was only in the last year that he’d been putting more in.
But that would lead to his argument that since I wasn’t working, he was picking up the slack.
And there were the two mortgage payments. And that was a whole different argument.
So we didn’t argue about it anymore.
Now, I went into Maddie’s old room and closed the door.
I pulled open my desk drawer and took out the stack of letters that were addressed to me, care of Parent Talk Magazine.
Josie had handed them to me months ago when we’d had lunch. She’d looked sheepish, explaining that she’d opened them, even though they were addressed to me.
“I wanted to make sure they weren’t from nutcases. Read them,” she’d said, pushing the stack across the table. “Maybe they’ll silence those other voices in your head.”
I’d read each of them several times by now.
There was a letter from Janet scrawled across ten pages, about her teenage son’s suicide. How she blamed herself for the longest time.
And Pam, a breast cancer survivor, who recently lost her young daughter to leukemia, writing to tell me how she would never step foot in her church again. No longer able to pray to a God that would allow such a thing to happen.
And Graham, who lost both his wife and daughter in a car accident that he somehow survived. The list went on and on. The letters were all varied in tone. Some angry. Some accepting. Some eloquently written, and others short and blunt, punctuated by exclamation marks and capital letters.
But all of the letters had one thing in common. In one way or another, they all said this: You are not alone . . .
?16
Jess