________
“Girl, what are you singing about now? It sure wasn’t what I was playing.” JD smoothed back her hair with the fingers on his left hand. His right cradled the neck of a guitar.
“My stepfather. He just takes over. Nobody asked his opinion!” Maxine yanked off her dark-blue hair ribbon and stuck it between the pages of her history textbook. Her newly pressed, straight hair draped her shoulders as she flopped back against his chest. It was a wonder JD couldn’t feel her heart beating an angry tattoo.
“What happened this time?” He set aside his instrument and drew her closer into him, toward the coolness of the tree covering. The movement of the sun had chased away the shade, and it was now kissing their toes. He lifted her hair from her neck and twirled it.
“I wanted to spend some time with Mama Ruby, away from the gruesome twosome.” Her feet were starting to get cooked in the late-summer sun, so she wrapped a leg around his and out of direct light. She felt his laughter.
“I’m surprised the ‘gruesome twosome’ didn’t want a break from you, Miss Susy Sunshine. All up in their groove. Here, let’s move this.”
The two disentangled themselves for a moment to pack up their lunch remains so they could move the blanket completely under cover of the trees. JD propped his guitar against the tree and they stretched out, her homework and his music forgotten. Maxine tucked her head under his chin and enjoyed the quiet of their spot. She’d missed this, since he’d left for Princeton. She wanted his fall break to go on forever. Her heartbeat slowed as her anger seeped into the fabric of the blanket.
“Nobody asked to be ‘all up in their groove,’ that’s for sure. It would’ve been so much fun in Spring Hope. Granddaddy was going to teach me how to make his pork roast. He’d already bought the fruit to season it with.” She felt his chest rumble under her hand. “What?” She turned to look at him.
“Are you always thinking of your stomach?”
“Hey! That’s unfair. It was my excuse to spend time with them. The pork roast was just icing on the cake. They were going to invite you to dinner, you know.” She resettled into her spot.
“I don’t get what’s so bad about Mr. Owens. You should give him a chance. He loves your mom, and it’s obvious he cares about you. He’s funny and—”
“How do you know so much about John?”
“He played basketball at the same prep school as my dad. And they still like each other, even though they played for rival ACC teams and our moms don’t get along. Really, baby, when you talk about him, you don’t say anything bad. You just sound jealous.”
“Jealous!” Maxine sat up and faced him head-on. “I’m not jealous. I-I’m on the outside, looking in. You should see the two of them, doing all the stuff Mother and I used to do together. And he thinks he’s my father, trying to tell me what to do.”
JD looped his arms around his bent knees. “He is your father.”
“No. He’s my stepfather. There’s a big difference.”
“Only if you make a difference. I bet he loves you like a daughter. He doesn’t have other children besides you and Zander, does he?”
“I’m not his child.” Maxine huffed at this unexpected assault. “What if I told you he’s moving us to Alabama?” She smirked. “Yes, I thought that would get your attention. Not so big a fan of your Mr. Owens now, are you?”
“He’s not mine. What are you talking about, Maxie?”
“He got a writing assignment that would take us to Mobile for who knows how long. I asked him why he couldn’t go without us since it’s temporary. I offered to watch the house or move back in with Mama Ruby and Granddaddy, but the two lovebirds just had a baby and don’t want to break up the family. Who cares what I think, how I feel about leaving school.” She looked away from him. “And moving farther from you.”
JD’s tapered index finger directed her face back in his direction. “I care.” He leaned forward and kissed her. “Okay, so maybe your stepdad isn’t so great.”
She laid her head on his shoulder and wrapped her arms around his waist. She soaked in the smell of Cool Water, the cologne she’d given him as a graduation present.
His breath was warm on her face. “When did you find out about this?”
“Earlier today.”
He drew her closer. “Is this the real reason you were so worked up?”
She nodded.
“I knew it was more than cooking with your grandparents. So what are we going to do about it, Maxie? I won’t get to see you when I come home.”
Maxine’s tears ran down his neck. “I know,” she squeaked. “What are we going to do, Jay?”
He pulled away slightly but kept her within the circle of his arms. He cupped her face. “You can count on me. I’ll find a way to fix this.” He kissed her trail of tears, working his way up from her chin. “I promise.”
________
Maxine stopped talking. She studied the vermillion buds on the bromeliad growing by the window.
“So what happened?” By this time, Lilian was leaning forward in her seat, her tea cooling on the end table.
Maxine focused on Lilian. “First John and Mother went to Mobile of course. He wrote an award-winning series of articles on college basketball that sold millions of copies.” She sipped from her own lukewarm cup.
“Wait. He’s that John Owens? Why didn’t I know that? I mean, I have your mother’s secret potato salad recipe, but I didn’t know your stepfather is the bestselling author Jack Owens?” Lilian’s soft striped socks covered the sound of her footsteps as she padded to the shelves by the bay window. She tapped each book with a closely cut fingernail until finally she withdrew a hardcover and held it aloft. “Aha! Here it is.”
“Yep, that’s his: Keeping God in the Game. You’ve read it?”
“Twice. Willy even referred to it in a sermon to the youth. I can’t believe I didn’t recognize him at the game! This book came from that series he wrote while you lived in Mobile?”
Maxine shook her head.
Lilian narrowed her eyes at the book. “No? But this is a compilation of articles—”
“I mean, yes, that’s the book. But no, I didn’t live in Mobile with them. At least not the whole time.”
“Wait. I’m confused.” She laid the book on the shelf.
“First John, Mother, and Zan relocated to Mobile for a while. He wrote the articles. And lived happily ever after.”
“But what about you?”
“I got married. I got pregnant. I moved to Alabama. Then I ran away from home. End of story.” Maxine swung her feet to the floor and reached for the platter on the coffee table. “I think I’m ready for a cookie now.”
Chapter Twenty
“WHAT DID YOU SAY?” Lilian whispered, in hot pursuit of her houseguest.
But there in her den, Maxine had sprinted years and miles beyond her reach, back to a scorching hot day in the woods.
________
Whenever JD needed to figure out something, he worked it out through his music. So Maxine let him. After a few bars of “Tears in Heaven,” his hands stilled on the strings.
“What if we get married?”
Maxine’s puffy, red-rimmed eyes opened wide. “What did you say?”
He rested the guitar on his lap and gazed at the overhang that created their bower.
“Jay, did you say something about marriage?” Maxine hated when he didn’t respond—as much as he hated to repeat something needlessly, she knew. “I’m only sixteen.”
“I know how old you are.” He seemed to be counting the robins that hopped from branch to branch above them. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“I’m only sixteen.” She didn’t care about his pet peeves. It bore repeating. “I’m too young to get married.” She watched him watch the birds. “Or is this about sex?”
They’d been dancing closer and closer to the big s-word for weeks—just uttering the three letters grew the pit in her stomach by another centimeter or two
. Yet something or someone held them back from consummating a relationship they both believed was forever. And not in that teenage, “I love writing your name over and over in my notebook” type of forever. Even her stepfather admitted to an unexplainable prescience whenever he saw them together or heard her say JD’s name. Ever-faithful Vivienne must have gone to her knees the second JD’s truck turned in to their driveway, and as much as she resented her mother’s fretful interference, the church girl within Maxine was grateful for the intercession.
At this moment, Maxine wondered if JD’s suggestion was merely a ruse to finally turn that irrevocable corner in their relationship. But then JD turned away from his nature study, and she looked into the eyes of the little boy who attended Sunday school, the young man who showed such respect for his mother and sister. Who honored and loved her. Maxine gripped the hands poised over his guitar strings. “I’m sorry. I know you don’t only want . . . that. I just don’t understand.”
He stopped resisting her, and one hand closed around hers. “Maxie, yes, I want you, but you’re mine already—at least in all the other ways that count. Do you believe that, too?”
She nodded.
“And I’m not coming up with some crazy scheme to keep you with me. It just feels right, like this is what we were meant to do.”
“But what about college? And, Jay, I know I already said it twice before, but I’m only sixteen. Mother and John will never let me get married! Won’t I have to get their permission?” Maxine crouched on her knees beside him as if pleading with him to come to his senses.
“What about college? I’ll keep going. And when your mom and stepfather go to Alabama, you can join me in Princeton and study up there or even stay with my parents and finish school here.”
“Leave my mother to stay with yours?”
“Okay, you have a point.” JD set aside his guitar and took her other hand. “But we can make this work. I know you love me, but do you trust me?”
“Of course I trust you.”
“We can do this. Your birthday is in a few weeks, and once you’re seventeen, you won’t need their permission. Then we won’t have to feel guilty about feeling the way we do. And yes, acting on it.”
He rose to one knee on the blanket and kissed her hand. Then he rained kisses on her cheeks, forehead, and nose, concentrating his attention on her eyes, which were streaming tears. “Maxine, your name means ‘noble,’ ‘bright,’ and ‘greatest,’ and you are all those things to me. Will you marry me?”
Maxine clasped his face with both of her hands and held him there for a few precious seconds as the crickets chirped away in the woods. Then she nodded as a maple leaf drifted down and landed between them. “And in case you didn’t hear me, that’s a yes,” she whispered.
________
“You married JD?”
Maxine touched her lips and looked around, surprised to find herself on a sofa. But she wasn’t out of the woods. She stared across the room at the wide-eyed pastor’s wife, planted in her spot by the bookshelf, a hand seemingly holding her heart in her chest.
Lilian slowly crossed to Maxine and plopped beside her on the sofa. She clutched the younger woman’s knee. “What in the world did your parents say when they found out?”
“They didn’t say anything.”
“What? I find that hard to believe.”
“I never told them. They still don’t know I married JD. I don’t know what would disappoint Mother most, getting pregnant outside of marriage or marrying ‘that boy’ and realizing Annie Lester is family . . .” Maxine’s voice faded.
“Or finding out the whole truth now.” Lilian’s voice was hushed, as if she hadn’t meant her thoughts to see the light of day.
Maxine shook her head slowly. Lilian’s words sloshed about in her head like water trapped in her ears. One summer she’d accidently slipped into the deep end during a neighbor’s pool party. She’d fought her way up for air, her lungs feeling like they’d explode. After bursting through the morass of legs and arms and pool toys, gasping and crying, she’d paddled through the frolicking teenagers to the edge, crawled out, and vowed never to swim again.
She’d kept that promise. And now, as then, Maxine resolved to remain high and dry. No more emotional diving. She brushed away Lilian’s hand and headed toward the kitchen. “I’ve got to go,” she managed, sucking in much-needed oxygen.
Lilian trailed her. “But I want to know—”
Maxine whirled on the petite woman on her heels. “You want to know! There’s so much I want to know, but you’ll have to take it up with God, Mrs. Atwater. I’m fresh out of answers.”
Lilian’s eyebrows rose, but she clamped her lips together. Silently she retrieved her visitor’s jacket and purse from a chair at the table and handed them over.
When Maxine took her things, she gripped the woman’s hands. She opened her mouth and took a deep, trembling breath. At first, nothing. She had to swallow hard to help her words find purchase in her throat, though her voice was as low as her downcast eyes. “Thank you. For tea and . . . everything.” Maxine forced herself to meet Lilian’s eyes. “And I mean everything. I never meant to disrespect you, especially here in your home.”
“No disrespect given, by you nor by me.” Lilian reached out and embraced Maxine, briefly but tightly. “I’d say, ‘No worries,’ but that would be disingenuous. You have nothing but worries, and understandably so. I didn’t mean to pry, at least not for my sake—though I admit I’m a curious cat by nature. But you need to cast some serious cares upon the Lord, my dear, and use whoever He sends your way to help you bear these burdens.”
The weight pressing on Maxine’s shoulders eased a bit.
“I’ll be frank with you. That free-pass thing Willy and I put on the table last month during your premarital counseling? I have a feeling that won’t apply here. But don’t let fear stop you from doing the right thing, whatever that is. Teddy is a big boy. He can handle it.”
“Handle what? The truth?”
“The truth of your past, definitely. He’ll be hurt that you didn’t trust him, but healing will follow the pain of your breakup.”
“Breakup?” Cool night air rushed past Maxine as she stood in the open storm door. “You don’t think he’ll forgive me for not telling him about Celeste?”
“Oh, the Teddy I know will accept Celeste. With open arms. He already knows she’s adopted, so I guess you can lead him a few more steps down the path that ends with you as her birth mother. But we both know no man worth his salt should marry someone who’s holding on to her past with both hands. You’re going to have to let go of it if you plan to slide on his wedding band.”
Lilian shook her head a little. “Please call me, anytime. And don’t worry. For now we’ll keep this between friends.”
She shut the door, leaving an openmouthed Maxine on the brick steps.
May
“But Jesus said, ‘Somebody touched Me, for I perceived power going out from Me.’ Now when the woman saw that she was not hidden, she came trembling; and falling down before Him, she declared to Him in the presence of all the people the reason she had touched Him and how she was healed immediately. And He said to her, ‘Daughter, be of good cheer; your faith has made you well. Go in peace.’”
LUKE 8:46-48
Chapter Twenty-One
“YOU LOOK BEAUTIFUL.”
Maxine resisted the urge to spin. It didn’t seem like the place, outside the bathroom door of Bojangles, with the odor of sausage-egg-and-cheese biscuits lingering in the air. Yet she did feel special in the antique white satin dress with its lace overlay she’d driven thirty-seven miles to find. The thrift store had charged an extra five dollars since it was marked “vintage,” but no matter. Nothing but the best for her wedding day.
JD took Maxine’s hand and kissed it. “You’re sure your folks think you’re on the college tour?”
Maxine grinned so big it made her eyes squint behind her gold-rimmed glasses. “Yes, we’re all set. Wh
at they don’t know will help us.”
Thursday, October 30, a week after her seventeenth birthday. Maxine didn’t need permission to marry, and her mother and stepfather thought she was oohing and aahing over Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, and William & Mary with the school’s Future Business Leaders of America club, not posing for wedding pictures in front of a poster advertising fried chicken and dirty rice. They wouldn’t expect her back for three days.
“What about your parents?” Maxine curled her fingers around his.
“They’re too busy avoiding each other to keep up with a son away in college. I’m good as long as I get back to class by Monday.” JD opened the passenger door and threw her bag into the back of the borrowed Ford Taurus.
“I wish we could’ve sneaked back to your house somehow just to get Blue so we could drive to our wedding in style.” She smiled at him as she slid in.
Once he sat behind the wheel, he ran his fingers over the squiggly lines on the printout. “According to the map, we’re close to the state line. That means we’ll soon be Mr. and Mrs. James Lester.” He caught her eyes and held them.
Maxine shifted in her seat, not that she was trying to break free. She’d been rolling the words over and over on her tongue all night. Her whole future was so close she could taste it. Maxine Lester. She swallowed and breathed, “Your wife.”
“Now, don’t go signing your married name on your math homework. Remember, we’re going to lay low for a few more months.”
“I know. I know. And you still think that’s going to work?”
“Why wouldn’t it?” JD took the exit onto the highway and headed northeast. “You’ll finish out your junior year here, and next summer, I’ll get an internship and save money. Shoot, I’ll even work full-time at Home Depot if I have to. I’ll head back to Princeton next fall, and you’ll join me after Christmas, once you get accepted early decision. You can finish out your senior year in New Jersey. I’ve heard about people homeschooling.”
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