The Secret to Hummingbird Cake

by Celeste Fletcher McHale

  Garrett kicked at the remains of his bike, then took off in Jack’s direction. “Let’s go, me and you! Right here!”

  Jack slowly began rolling up his sleeves. “I’m ready when you are.”

  Garrett’s buddy was dragging him back by the arm. “Hey, man,” he said, “I don’t think this is a good idea!”

  Garrett made a weak effort to throw his friend’s arm off of him, but it was becoming pretty clear he didn’t want to tangle with Jack. Half the men there had already moved behind Jack and were ready to defend him, including Tommy.

  “Get out of here, Garrett,” Jack said.

  Garrett got on the back of his friend’s Harley, screaming over the roar of the engine. “This ain’t over, man! I’m coming for you, Jack! It ain’t over!”

  “Send me the bill,” Jack said.

  Garrett and his partner rode into the night with Garrett still screaming and cursing. I held my ears as the Harley roared out of sight.

  Jack walked over to where I was standing while everyone else gathered around the pile of Harley. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  I gazed up at him. “Mm-hmm,” I managed.

  He smiled, the sweetest and most tender smile. I don’t think I will ever forget it. He leaned a little closer. “Can I call you tomorrow?” Had Jack Whitfield just asked me if he could call me tomorrow?

  “Uh . . . well. I . . .,” I stammered and caught a glimpse of Lexi Carter staring at us from beside Jack’s truck with her hands on her hips. I may have been a lot of things, but I was no homewrecker. I looked back up at him. “Are you and Lexi still together?” I asked.

  “Not for long,” he answered. “I’ve been waiting a long time for you to grow up, Carrigan. I don’t think I can wait any longer.”

  I must’ve been lost in the memory, because suddenly there Jack was on the porch, standing beside the swing. “You must be thinking about football,” he said. “It usually gives you that misty-eyed look.”

  He was teasing me. That hadn’t happened lately. I glanced up and smiled a little, but kept my feelings in check. “Hey,” I said. “I didn’t hear you.”

  “I came in on stealth,” he said. “Move over.” He sat down in the swing beside me.

  I bit my lip. Dear Lord, he looked good, all sweaty and dirty and tan. I scooted back into the seat.

  “So what were you dreaming of?”

  I weighed the question and decided to pull the trigger. What difference did it make at this point? I might as well tell him the truth. “Actually, I was thinking about the first time you ever really talked to me.” I pointed toward the tree down by the driveway. “I was standing right down there.”

  “I remember.” He grinned. “You had on white shorts, an LSU jersey, and a pair of running shoes.”

  “You can remember what I was wearing?”

  He shrugged. “It was a big day for me.”

  “Really?” I asked. “How so?”

  “It was the first time I talked to my future wife,” he said. “And I knew it then.”

  His admission gave me the warm fuzzies, but it was pointless to let that sentence affect me. No sense in getting all swoony about it. We sat in silence for a few minutes, watching the sunset over the river. Then, out of nowhere, he turned to me. “I do love you, Carrigan.”

  “What?”

  He pulled me closer. “I said I love you. Come here, girl.” He wrapped his arm around me.

  I reluctantly leaned back into the crook of his arm as we rocked gently in the swing. We sat there in silence for a little while before he spoke. “Carrigan,” he said, “I know things have been . . . strained between us. I know you need . . . an explanation.” He paused, and I guessed he was waiting for me to speak. When I didn’t, he continued, “If I ask you to do something for me, will you?”

  A torrent of emotions ran through my mind. So I clung to the one that had always served me best. Humor. “It doesn’t involve whips, chains, or leather, does it?”

  He chuckled. “No.”

  “Okay,” I said, “I’m game.”

  He held me closer to him. “Come out to the old barn tomorrow. I’ve got to do a few repairs on it, and I thought if you were gonna exercise Gilda anyway, you could ride out there. We’ll talk. About everything.”

  The decision was made in about two seconds. “Okay.” I had about a million questions, but I left them unspoken. I was afraid if I asked them, the mood would be broken and I’d never be able to get it back. Sometimes you just need to keep your mouth shut. And strangely enough, I did.

  We sat in the swing in silence, his arms wrapped around me. Honestly, I didn’t know how to process any of this. I didn’t know what Jack was thinking, what it meant, or how to proceed from here. But tonight I didn’t want to worry about what-ifs or maybes or anything else that would cast a shadow over this night. I didn’t want the battle that raged inside me between my pride and my love for this man to rear its ugly head again.

  Maybe that made me as weak as all the women I made fun of. But I didn’t care. Tonight I wanted to be Jack’s wife again. I wanted to be seventeen and watch my knight in shining armor fight the bad guys and whisk me away on the back of a fiery steed. Being next to him felt good. It felt right.

  It felt like coming home.

  Later that night when we went to bed, for the first time in a long time, he held me close to him all night. No sex, no talking, just lying wrapped up in his arms the way we used to sleep before the indifference and distrust had somehow crept into our marriage. I fell into the most peaceful sleep I’d had in months. I didn’t know then, but it was also the last peaceful sleep I would have for a long, long time.

  The next morning I woke up and found a note on the pillow beside me. “Have one of the boys saddle Gilda and meet me as soon as you can. Jack.” I jumped in the shower and was ready to go in thirty minutes. I grabbed an apple from the kitchen and headed out the door with Mamie begging me to let her fix my breakfast.

  “I’ll probably be back before lunch,” I told her. “The apple will be fine.”

  She cackled and shook her head. “I don’t think you gonna make it back for lunch, Miss Carri.” I didn’t ask her what she meant. I just flew out to the barn, had Chester saddle Gilda, and took off. The old barn was at least a mile and a half deep into the property, and I would first have to cross a soybean field, a creek, and a hayfield to get there. I rode across this gorgeous, well-managed land aware of how much I loved this place. Jack’s place. And mine.

  Jack had already been working for a while when I got there. He walked out of the barn, shirtless, in faded jeans and boots, all tanned and muscled and sweaty. There was a picnic basket under a cedar tree and a blanket next to it. No wonder Mamie didn’t expect me for lunch. I’d be lucky to get back for Christmas.

  Jack took the reins from me and I slid off Gilda into his arms. All those worries and questions that ran through my mind were suddenly gone. Just like that. Nothing mattered to me except this moment. Maybe some other day I’d drown myself in concerns about what he had or hadn’t done, but today was mine. Ours.

  Mamie had packed fried chicken and fruit for lunch. We never touched the food, but the blanket got a pretty good workout. Making love on a blanket in the July sun? Then again in the barn when a summer thunderstorm caught us unawares?

  Last week I had wanted to claw his eyes out of his head, and today I would’ve given him my soul if he’d asked for it. My husband was back. The gentle, attentive lover. Whispering tender words in my ear, making me feel like the only woman on earth. This was what I had missed. Not the sex, although it was as incredible as it had ever been. It was the intimacy. The closeness. T
he familiarity. God, how I had missed him.

  We rode back slowly that evening, stopping now and then to steal a kiss, squeeze a hand. Neither of us wanted the day to end. But it was getting dark and we had to get back. When we’d made it almost home, he stopped his horse and grabbed the reins of mine. “We never got to talk today.”

  I squeezed his hand. “It’s okay, Jack,” I said. “We’ll talk.”

  “Before I tell you anything, I just want you to know I have always loved you,” he said. “Even if you didn’t think I did.”

  Tears sprang to my eyes. Suddenly I no longer cared what he’d done or who he’d done it with. Just like that, it didn’t matter any more. We had both made mistakes. Whatever his were, they certainly couldn’t be any worse than mine. But we were still standing, we were still here, and we still had a chance. Isn’t that all anybody could really ask for?

  In that instant I didn’t care if everybody in Bon Dieu Falls thought I was a fool. This was my Jack. What could another woman do to touch what was between the two of us? I was immediately filled with regret and disgust for my part of the mess we had made. I was just about to tell him how sorry I was and how I loved him, and beg him for forgiveness, when I heard a shrill and panicked voice. Ella Rae?

  “Carrigan! Carrigan!” Ella Rae was shouting my name.

  I slid off the horse and ran toward her. Why was she here? What had happened? When I reached her she was trembling all over. I’d never seen her like this. She was rambling about her cell phone and no reception and calling me. And she was sobbing.

  “What is it?” I heard my own voice shaking, horrified of what she was about to tell me. “Ella Rae! Is it Tommy?”

  She shook her head and bent to grab her knees as if to catch her breath. Jack was beside her instantly, holding her up, soothing her. “What is it, Rae?” he said. “Can you tell me?”

  She grabbed his hand and finally looked up, her face wet with tears. She took a deep breath and looked into my eyes. “It’s Laine,” she said, “and it’s bad.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  I knew the man was talking, I could see his lips moving. But the roaring in my ears prevented me from understanding a word he said. I caught broken sentences once in a while, a few words strung together, but it made no sense to me. Like a cell phone with awful reception.

  I stared at him, willing myself to hear him. Still . . . broken phrases. “Often asymptomatic . . . terminal . . . maybe a year . . .” What was he talking about? Had I lost my ability to process English? I stared at him again. My hands were shaky and cold and clammy. And as much as I tried, a coherent thought would not come. But mostly I was furious, and it was all I could do to remain in my chair.

  Ella Rae and I sat in the conference room on the third floor of Shreveport Medical Center with Laine’s mother, Jeannette, and her brother, Michael. There was a man sitting at the head of the conference table, a doctor, telling us Laine had been diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer.

  But surely that wasn’t what he had said. He said the cancer had spread. He said she had a year left, maybe eighteen months with treatment. He said they could make her comfortable but didn’t sound too convincing about it.

  I looked at Mrs. Jeannette. Stunned. I looked at Michael. Stoic. I looked at Ella Rae, who had cried so much her eyes were nearly swollen shut. She was clinging to my hand as if it were a life raft. I wanted to cry, too, but the tears wouldn’t come. I knew they should, and I felt guilty because they wouldn’t. But my eyes remained dry.

  The room was stifling, and the walls kept creeping in until it was becoming smaller and smaller. It smelled like hand sanitizer and carpet cleaner. I changed positions in my chair again, tugged at my collar, tried to breathe. “Do any of you have any questions for me?” the doctor said.

  I stared at him again, his little wire-rimmed glasses and bald head. What was his name? He had told us his name, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember it.

  I looked around. Nobody said a word. They just sat there. Staring. Seriously? I had a million questions.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Doctor . . . I can’t remember your name . . .”

  “Rougeau.”

  “Yes, Doctor Rougeau.” I fidgeted, wringing my hands until they hurt. I tapped my foot. “I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying. I mean, I get that she’s ill, and it’s serious, but it’s treatable, right?”

  He cleared his throat and glanced at his desk before looking up at me. “As I said, I am not optimistic. But stranger things have happened.”

  I blinked. Finally. “What does that even mean?” I asked.

  He took a deep breath. “Your friend is very sick. Stage four means—”

  “Look,” I said, “I know what stage four means. My grandfather died of lung cancer. I’m not an idiot. But this is a young, healthy woman. She’s thirty years old.” The more reasons I came up with for why Laine couldn’t possibly have cancer, the louder I got. “She was riding a bicycle for miles two months ago. There is no way she can have stage four cancer!”

  He looked at me sympathetically, but he didn’t budge. “I’m so sorry.”

  “She doesn’t smoke.” I continued as if he hadn’t spoken, as if I could change the outcome if I just kept talking. “She doesn’t drink more than a thimble full of fuzzy navel once a month. She takes care of herself. She can’t have cancer.”

  Doctor Rougeau nodded. “Sometimes . . . and we don’t always know why . . . people get sick. I wish I had an explanation to give you. I just don’t. We’ll make her as comfortable as we can.”

  White-hot anger flew all over my body. “That’s it? Are you kidding me? You can make her comfortable? This is crap.” Ella Rae grabbed my hand.

  “Carrigan, don’t!”

  In the background I heard Mrs. Jeannette apologize to Doctor Rougeau. “She and Laine are very close, and Carrigan can be a bit . . . headstrong.”

  “Come on, Ella Rae,” I said. I couldn’t stand it one more second. It had become impossible to breathe and even more impossible to listen to the conversation. I hated the doctor for talking, and I hated everybody else for staying silent. I dragged Ella Rae down the hall so fast we were almost jogging.

  Ella Rae stumbled to keep up. “Carri, please!” she said. “Stop! Please!”

  I stopped and turned on her. “What?”

  “What are we gonna do?”

  Tears were spilling down her cheeks. It hurt me to look at her. I closed my eyes and clenched my jaw so tightly it popped. I knew I should hug her, comfort her, but I couldn’t. In my mind, if I acknowledged her pain, this whole nightmare would become real. So I shoved her into the ladies’ room. “Straighten your face up,” I said. “I don’t want her to see you like this. And hurry up.”

  I stood in the hall waiting for her and forced myself to take deep breaths. I knew I had been close to hyperventilating sitting in that conference room, and I wasn’t sure it had passed yet. I couldn’t pull that mess in front of Laine. I felt bad for being so hateful to Ella Rae when I shoved her in the bathroom. But she had to get it together. I clamped my jaws down again, determined. If I was going to have to be the strength of this little group, then fine, I could do it. I had to do it. If everybody else was willing to give up on her, that was their business. But I wasn’t going to. I wasn’t going to let Ella Rae give up and I surely wasn’t letting Laine give up on herself.

  Ella Rae stepped out of the bathroom but began to cry again as soon as she looked at me. “I can’t do this, Carrigan.”

  “Yes, you can.” I tried to make my voice a little gentler. “You have to.” I pointed down the hall toward the conference room we’d just left. “They’ve already buried her.
You hear me?” I felt my own voice break with the words. “But she’s not gonna die. She just isn’t. Now, come on.”

  Ella Rae, bless her, did all she could to put on a brave face as we headed down the hall. But it was a thinly veiled front, and I knew she could fall apart any moment. In some way, I wished I could join her.

  Laine was asleep when we walked into her room, the remaining effects of a sedative still hanging on. Ella Rae sat on a chair beside the bed and cried softly. There was no sense in telling her to stop. She couldn’t and I knew that.

  Asleep, Laine looked frail, and it was clear she was sick and suffering. How could Ella Rae and I have missed this? She was white as the sheet she was lying on. There were dark circles under her eyes, even more pronounced because her face was thin and pale.

  I had seen her only three weeks ago. How could this have happened already? Somewhere in the back of my mind, I remembered Charlotte saying Laine looked tired at the Crawfish Boil back in May. My mother had mentioned it to me at church a couple of weeks later. Laine herself had complained about being tired a time or two, but she always said she was tired.

  Why hadn’t I seen this? Was I so wrapped up in my own petty crap that I allowed a third of my lifetime trio to wither away in front of my eyes? Was I so shallow and superficial, so caught up in me, my wants, my needs, my indiscretion, that I couldn’t see the truth? I had lugged her all over the place when she wanted to stay home. I kept her out half the night when she didn’t want to stay out. I worried her all the time with my marriage, Romeo, and my preposterous, insane, self-created drama.

  Everything was a joke to Ella Rae and me. Everything we did was for entertainment purposes only. Not Laine. She took life seriously, her job, the kids she taught, everything. She took my marriage more seriously than I did. I swallowed at the bile rising in my throat. I couldn’t stand my own skin and wanted to claw at the thoughts inside my head.

  Laine began to move her legs around, and after a few moments she opened her eyes. She looked at me and smiled slightly, then at Ella Rae. “I’m so sorry.”