Where Petals Fall

by Melissa Foster

  “Your father spent every day of his life after the affair was over making me happy. He went to great lengths, for years, right up until the day he died—”

  Junie watched her bite back tears.

  “Until the day he died, he made sure that I always knew where he was, what he was doing, and he communicated when he was unhappy. As a wife, you can’t ask for more than that.”

  “Yes, you can.” Junie felt the respect she had for her mother diminishing with each defensive word she spoke. “You can demand fidelity. It’s your right as a wife.” Junie couldn’t believe her mother hadn’t been strong enough to stand up for herself, for their marriage. “Mom, you are the one who taught me to stand up for myself and that I deserve respect. How come you don’t believe the same about yourself? It’s so…so weak.” Junie felt guilty the second the word flew from her lips.

  “Weak? Is that what you think of me? Let me tell you something, missy. It takes more strength to stay in a broken marriage, to accept responsibility, to fix yourself and fix the marriage than leaving ever could. Nowadays marriage means nothing. It’s someone you spend time with, someone you can take or leave when they bother you too much or cause you too much pain.” Her mother crossed her arms, then uncrossed them, her jaw clenched, then unclenched. “Marriage today is shameful. Nothing is more important than loving the person you choose to marry and meaning your vows when you say them.” Ruth’s voice escalated. “Had he slept with her, yes, I might have gone home to my mother, which would have been my only choice with a newborn in tow, but he didn’t, and truth be known, I loved him, adored him.”

  “I’m sorry, Mom, but now it’s my fault?” Junie asked.

  “No. God, no. It’s not your fault. It’s not really even my fault. Things in life evolve around circumstance. Good times wax and wane. What happened between Susan and your father tore apart more than just our family while it was going on. When your father told Peter, their relationship was hurt. Do you think Susan left town because of Ellen?”

  “Yes. She couldn’t take it anymore.”

  “No, she left town because her husband couldn’t take the infidelity, and losing him again—the first time to work, the second to the affair—was too much. She came to see me before she left. She said she was sorry for what happened, that it was all emotional comfort; no physicality occurred. She said”—Ruth paused to wipe a tear from her cheek—“she said I was the luckiest woman around. That my husband loved me, and you, more than we could ever know.”

  The tightness in Junie’s chest spread to her arms and legs. Her entire body was one constricted muscle. How could her father put her mother in this position? Junie was trapped in her discomfort. She needed to be there for her mother even if she couldn’t help but feel she was hearing something that, as a daughter, she shouldn’t be privy to. Her father’s affair didn’t answer the questions that remained about Ellen. Ellen.

  Junie wished she could reach for her mother’s hand. “Mom, you’ve carried this secret for so long. I’m sorry.”

  Ruth looked down at the crumpled tissue in her hands. “There’s more.”

  Junie’s heart sank. Please don’t tell me Ellen was his child. Please don’t say Mom was wrong. “More?”

  “You know him, and you know that he would have felt a lot of guilt about what he’d done to their family, even though he believed that Peter was really the death of their family unit.”

  “He couldn’t have felt too guilty. He did it, didn’t he?” Junie turned away from the screen.

  “Look, you can’t change what Daddy did any more than he could have, and believe me, he would have if he could have. But you can listen to what I have to say, and then you can make a decision about what type of person your father was.”

  Junie kept her eyes trained on the keyboard.

  “Your father always believed that the reason Peter didn’t pay any attention to Ellen was because of him.”

  “Was she his?” Junie asked.

  “No, of course not. We moved in after you and she had already been born, but Peter treated her as if she were the reason Susan had fallen apart, and he and Daddy didn’t see eye to eye after that, as is to be expected.”

  Junie let the silence settle between them; then, after a moment, she said, “Fallen apart?”

  “Susan had a mini breakdown, I guess you’d call it.” The edges of Ruth’s lips lifted. “I guess we both did. Susan blew up at Peter just before her…tryst…started. Peter thought that having an infant and a young, energetic boy was too much for her. He always had an edge about him when he was near Ellen, and I think it was because he blamed her, as the infant, for Susan’s breakdown.”

  Junie thought of Ellen, always vying for her father’s attention, trying to be the perfect child. Shh, my Dad’s working. Don’t disturb him. My daddy never sleeps. He’s such an important man. He has to work all the time. Daddy, look for me! I’m hiding! Yes, she could see the distance between them.

  “He adored Brian, some say, a little too much.”

  That didn’t get him far.

  “Anyway, your father took it upon himself to be like a father to Ellen.”

  “Didn’t that bother you? I mean, staying in the neighborhood alone must have killed you, but seeing Ellen—” Junie’s hand flew to her mouth. “My God, me and Ellen. She was around every second of the day.”

  Ruth lifted her eyebrows. “Like I said, it wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t Ellen’s fault. That sweet girl was a gift to you. You needed a sister, and I, well, I couldn’t give you one.”

  Junie knew about her mother’s fertility issues and wanted to tell her how sorry she was that she couldn’t have more children, but she was afraid of making the already painful discussion even more painful. Instead she said, “She was like a sister.”

  “I was thankful for that. You needed a sibling.” Ruth let out a long sigh. “What I have to tell you next will hurt. You’re not going to want to hear it, and you might wish I never said it, but I’ve never taken the easy road, and you need to know why your father did what he did.”

  Junie couldn’t imagine what could be worse than what she’d already heard. She braced herself against the chair.

  “The summer that Ellen disappeared, your father was teaching her about photosynthesis.”

  Junie waited. There had to be more. That was the big, bad, terrible thing?

  “O-kay.” And?

  “Well, he wasn’t teaching you, his daughter,” Ruth said softly.

  “So?”

  “So, you aren’t upset that he was teaching Ellen and not you?” Ruth’s face contorted with confusion. “You were his little girl. I always felt bad for you because I thought he should take you under his wing, not Ellen.”

  “I might have been Daddy’s little girl, but he taught me stuff all the time. Why would I be mad about that?”

  Ruth let out a relieved whew. “You sort of zoned out during his science lessons.”

  “I did not! I loved listening to him.” Junie swore under her breath. “I did!”

  “Junie, think about it. When Daddy was talking about bee pollination, you were thinking about brownies and baking. When he tried to focus your attention on plants and photosynthesis, you made up every excuse in the book to not listen.”

  Junie laughed. “I did?” She squinted. “I don’t remember that.”

  “Apparently there’s a lot you don’t remember.”

  “So Ellen going into the shed—”

  “A lesson in photosynthesis. He asked you to go, too, but you didn’t want to. Whether you remember it or not, he did ask you, practically begged you, to take part in it.”

  “That explains the way Ellen looked at me.” Relief swept through Junie. “She looked at me like she was special and I wasn’t.”

  “Unfortunately, we all picked up on how Ellen played you with regard to your father, but that’s what girls did, I guess. Sisters compete for attention all the time, and you two were as close as sisters, so we didn’t feel that we had to put a
stop to it.”

  “She did not play me.” Junie didn’t remember feeling that at all.

  “Oh, yes she did, and you were pretty pissed at her. We thought you’d eventually handle it in your own way. You know your father didn’t believe in mollycoddling. He wouldn’t have let me intervene if I had tried to. I think after Ellen disappeared, you sort of let all that jealousy go. You memorialized a glorified recollection of her, just as you’ve done with your father. It’s not a bad thing. It just is what it is.”

  “Was there any bad in her?”

  “Oh, she could be such a little snit.”

  Junie laughed. “Really? Tell me. I don’t remember that.”

  “Oh, she crossed a few lines. Even at seven, she could rile up her brother, teasing him about girlfriends and then running and hiding behind her mother. She’d get into a conversation with your father and look at you—if looks could kill, you’d have sear marks through your heart. It used to infuriate me, but she was just a little girl. She didn’t know any better, and she—” Ruth looked down. “I felt bad for her.”

  “Because of Peter?”

  “Yes, at first, but then because she had a medical issue.”

  Junie didn’t know anything about a medical issue. Could there be any more about her life that she had been blind to? “What are you talking about?”

  “The weekend before Ellen disappeared, she was sleeping over. It was the first time it had ever happened. She got up to get a drink of water, and your father found her seizing on the floor.”

  “Seizing?”

  “Yes, she dropped to the floor as he was coming out of the den. Once he realized what was going on, he rolled her onto her side and he had to hold her jaw open. He was afraid she’d swallow her tongue.”

  The memory.

  “Susan had taken her to the doctor a few hours later. They thought she might have had Tourette’s. The testing was scheduled for later that week, and then—”

  “She disappeared.”

  Ruth nodded.

  “Mom, I’m so sorry. No wonder you were so mad at me. I feel like an idiot.” Junie looked into her mother’s eyes, seeing years of pain that she’d only made worse in recent days. “You are right. You were strong, not weak. I’m so sorry for all that I said. I had no right to judge you.”

  “Oh, Junie, you’ve said much worse than that to me. Don’t you remember your teen years?”

  The tension eased, and they began to reminisce about little things she and Ellen had gotten into as children, and they pondered what life might have been like had Ellen not disappeared. Ruth thought Ellen might have turned into a conniving teen, and they’d have grown apart. Before talking to Ruth about Ellen, the real Ellen, not her apparently glorified memory of her, Junie wouldn’t have been able to imagine such a turn of events. Now she wasn’t so sure.

  “There’s just one thing that I have to ask you, and this time you might get mad at me. I went into Daddy’s shed the other day.”

  “I know.”

  “You know?” How?

  “Junie, you have never been good at snooping. You found the sweater, right?”

  “How could you know?”

  “Because when you put the key back, it was set differently. Your father always left the key ring on the inside, against the wall. It was his thing. I thought you’d get better at snooping, but it seems you’re no better at it now then you were at seven.”

  “You knew?”

  “About you and Ellen in Daddy’s shed? Yes, we knew. We were watching you girls from the bedroom window.”

  “No way! We were sure we went undetected.” Junie remembered how they’d snuck back into the house, feeling as though they’d broken into Fort Knox, and how they’d laughed uncontrollably afterward.

  “Hardly. When you two girls giggled and whispered, we knew there was trouble brewing. Your father found that sweater tucked behind the workbench right after Ellen went missing. He didn’t have the heart to bring it over to Susan. He told me about it, and he didn’t want to bring it into the house, because he didn’t want to upset you. So he must have just put it away and forgotten about it. I remembered after we fought the other day. Then I noticed the keys. I should have said something, but I just didn’t have the strength to get into it.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Junie plucked the stems off of the black cherries at a slow, even pace, thinking about the Skype call with her mother. Her father had had an affair. Okay, no big deal, right? Junie wasn’t so sure. If her mother could forgive him, why couldn’t she? Why did she feel her father’s betrayal of her mother as if it were her he’d betrayed?

  She tried to retrieve memories of him not being present, working late, or simply letting them down, but no matter how hard she tried, the memories just weren’t there. How could she not remember that? Her mother had said she was just a little girl, and children’s perspectives were different from adults’. Boy, was she right about that, but surely she’d have some memory of an absent father. Or had she been too selfish to notice then, too? Selfishness seemed a running theme in her life these days.

  She twisted and yanked the stems, her muscles growing more taut with each passing thought. She thought of how her father’s affair was hitting a little too close to home with the recent turn of events between her and Brian. Was she being weak? Was she being stupid? Could he be taking advantage of the freedom in their relationship? Junie tossed the plump cherries into an orange plastic bowl, flicking the stems directly into the trash. She needed about six cups of cherries for the crumble she was making, and she had all afternoon free to make it—her appointment with Theresa wasn’t until four p.m. She still couldn’t believe she’d talked Theresa into seeing her so soon. Words like emergency and breakthrough always got a therapist’s attention.

  She answered the phone with a terse, Hello?

  “Well, well,” Shane quipped. “Are we a bit testy today?”

  “Please. Wouldn’t you be?” Junie closed her eyes and took a deep breath, wiping her hands on a towel. “I’m sorry. I’m a bit overwhelmed at the moment.”

  “And you’re baking what?”

  Junie smiled. He read her like a book. “Cherry crunch bars, I think. If I don’t mangle the cherries in the process.”

  “Breathe, Junie. Breathe. I was thinking, if you want me to come with you to see Theresa, anytime, I will. You know that, right?”

  “Yeah, of course. No worries. I know you’ve got my back.”

  Shane let out a breath. “Are you okay, Junie? I mean, really okay? You have so much going on.”

  “Shane, I’m fine, really.” Junie bit back the tinge of sadness she felt when she wished Brian could be as intuitive as Shane was.

  “Okay. I know you have a lot on your plate, so don’t worry about the shop. I’ve got it covered.”

  “You always do, my dear. It’s the one thing in my life I can count on.” Junie realized how true that was. “Thank you, Shane.”

  Junie carried no guilt that afternoon when she let Sarah watch television and play her computer games. She needed a little mommy time, and as wrong as she knew it was, she was again thankful for the quiet. Maybe I’m looking at everything all wrong. Maybe God knew my life was about to upend, and he’d done this to Sarah knowing I couldn’t deal with a rambunctious four-year-old. Junie closed her eyes. God, I am selfish.

  With the stems removed, Junie sat down at the table to pit the cherries. She dug into the sweet pulp with a toothpick, feeling it nudge against the pit, then digging below and flicking the pit out the end where the stems had been. By the fifth cherry, she was mangling the damn things, jabbing the toothpick in so hard it came out the other end and mumbling under her breath, “Bastard. Cheater.”

  She mixed the cherries, sugar, cornstarch, water, and almond extract and set it aside while she mixed the dry ingredients. Junie raised her eyebrows, choosing to hand beat the dry ingredients instead of using the mixer. She mashed her frustrations in with the flour, salt, and baking powder. Having
creamed the butter and sugar, she dropped each of the three eggs in separately, enjoying the exertion it took to blend them in one at a time.

  She prepared the sweet crumble topping, dipping her finger in the brown sugar and butter mixture and popping it into her mouth. If her father were there, he’d say, “What Mom doesn’t know…” That saying now held a totally different meaning, stirring up Junie’s pulse once again.

  “Damn it, Daddy.”

  Junie spread the fruit in the bottom of the baking pan, buried them with batter, then added the crumbles to the top and slipped the pan into the oven.

  When the phone rang, Junie jumped.

  Brian? She wiped her hands on a towel and reached for her cell phone.

  “Hi.” Her voice trembled.

  “Hey.” Brian breathed hard into the phone. “Look, we need to talk. I shouldn’t have left. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. I haven’t exactly been the best person to be around either.”

  “I’m happy that Sarah is making a breakthrough. I was a prick, and I’m sorry. It’s just that there’s all this emotional crap that came up lately, and—”

  “It’s okay,” Junie said, though she was still angry about his lies. She mentally kept her anger at bay. She wasn’t about to ruin the chance they had at reconciliation. How bad could it be? He’d lied about his father, and with their relationship in such a state of unhappiness, if he needed to keep the rebuilding of that bridge to himself for a while, she could respect that.

  “No, it’s not, and I’m sorry. Can I come home tonight?”

  “I’m not the one who made you leave. This is your house. Of course you can come home.” Junie bit her lower lip, then said, “But can we talk from now on instead of storming out?”

  “You bet.”

  Junie heard the smile in his voice when he told her he loved her. Even the silence of the line going dead seemed happier than it had before.

  As she set her cell phone on the counter, guilt tightened around her chest. She purposely hadn’t told Brian that she was going back to see Theresa, and she wondered what she might make of her omission.