Jacob would have fun here.
My own thought startled me.
Sometimes Ruthie would say that God whispered in her ear. Mostly she said that when it was something we questioned the sanity of, like God whispered in her ear that she should learn how to hang glide before she died. My mother had told her if God said that, there wouldn’t be much time that passed between her hang gliding and her dying.
When Wyatt and I started dating, I had stopped attending church. Wyatt said we could be spiritual without being religious, and that worked for me. Until it didn’t. After Wyatt’s accident, it seemed that God slammed the door on me. Or at least on my chance to experience any joy in my life. So God and I had been on talking probation for a long time, and I didn’t think either one of us had reopened the lines of communication. Maybe it was Wyatt’s voice I was hearing?
I remembered my conversation earlier with Ruthie about choosing joy. Wyatt and our baby were gone forever. That tragedy would be with me always. But I could decide to open myself to all that was left of Wyatt on this earth, and that was Jacob.
A phone call later, Jenny agreed that she and Jacob would meet me Saturday at the park for a picnic lunch and for a surprise neither one of them knew about. Wyatt’s gifts.
Mia sent a text telling me to check my email for links to properties that Bryce wanted me to look at, along with a video of Lily singing “Itsy-Bitsy Spider.” Except her version was, “Itsy-fitsy sfider clumbed up the water sfout.” She ended her song telling me how much she missed me, and she wanted her nails painted. Lily’s face exploded into view, and she whispered, “My nanny don’t do it right.”
I laughed. Her nanny probably had her number already and was limiting her color choices.
I promised Mia I’d look. She knew I was notorious for having unanswered personal emails going back for weeks. She continued to send me her ???? texts until I reassured her I was waiting for everything to stop hitting the fan and then I’d make a FaceTime reservation with her.
Shopping for groceries after I had been running didn’t rank as one of my smartest ideas. But when I invited Jenny and Jacob to the park, I’d used the word picnic, which suggested food and snacks and drinks. I was determined to be prepared the day before and not scurry around Saturday morning only to find myself at some fast-food drive-through placing a large to-go order.
No wonder mothers have panic attacks. An entire aisle displayed box after carton after pouch after cups after bowls of kid treats, packaged in loud colors and featuring suspiciously happy cartoon characters or zoo animals or playgroups. Some were unapologetic sugar overloads. Others were fat-free, sugar-free, organic, gluten-free, non-genetically modified, soy-free, vegan, fair-trade certified. Pity the child who showed up with a fruit roll-up at lunch time. The kid might as well have worn a T-shirt that screamed, “My parents don’t care about me.”
I called Jenny to ask her if there was anything Jacob was allergic to or that would send him into some shame spiral if he ate it.
“Crazy, isn’t it? As if there isn’t enough for mothers to feel guilty about already,” she said and went on to give me some suggestions. “And, Olivia, it means a lot to me that you invited us.”
Oddly, Saturday morning my parents said nothing to me as they watched me making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which I cut into triangles, packing grapes and carrot sticks and apple slices and animal crackers in little plastic bags, and making wraps with chicken and avocados. It wasn’t until I brought an ice chest into the kitchen and filled it with juice pouches and a bottle of wine that my father, as he refilled his coffee cup, remarked, “I assume that’s not all for you.”
“And you assumed correctly,” I said. I slipped my arms through the straps on the backpack where I’d stashed all the food, picked up the ice chest, and headed for the side door that led to the garage. After I had everything loaded in the car, I opened the door, popped my head through, and said, “I’m going on a picnic. With Jacob, Wyatt’s son, and his mother, Jenny.”
I didn’t linger to see their expressions. It was a mean and petty thing to do since I hadn’t told them anything about Jenny and Laura’s visit. But for once, just once in this entire tragic mess, I knew something about Wyatt before they did.
Jenny arrived just a few minutes after I had parked. I told her we’d meet at the duck pond, hoping that feeding the ducks with Jacob would be an easy icebreaker.
At first he didn’t want to let go of his mother’s hand when I showed him the bag of stale bread and asked him if he wanted to feed the ducks with me. I stood between the edge of the pond and where Jacob stood and started tossing out bits of bread. After a few tosses, I felt a tug on my shorts and heard “Can I have some?”
I looked down to see Jacob standing next to me, those saucer blue eyes looking up at me and his little hand outstretched. I handed him a few pieces of bread and told him to toss them as far as he could. Jenny followed him and was taking pictures. He giggled and laughed and seemed to have no fear, unlike me, who was certain at any time he was going to lose a few fingers because he didn’t let go of the bread fast enough.
Before we ate lunch, he climbed over, around, under, and through every piece of equipment on the playground. He wanted to try the rock climbing next, but Jenny suggested we eat first. I was so grateful she did because I was exhausted just watching him.
I think I fell in love with him when, during lunch, he asked his mom if he could come back and play with Miss “Olibeya.”
“I would like that very much,” I said and tried very hard to keep the emotions that swelled my heart from leaking out of my eyes.
Jenny and I, for most of the time we spent together, didn’t talk about Wyatt. We were just two women getting to know each other. As usual when you first get to know someone, there was still that veneer of awkwardness. At one point, she mentioned something about liking country music. Had I been with Mia, my response would have been, “Just poke my eardrums out now with a guitar string, would you?” But I kept myself in check and mumbled something about not being familiar with the latest country hits.
When Jacob started to get cranky, we knew it was time to go. By the time Jenny buckled him in his car seat, he was about three long blinks shy of falling asleep. She thanked me again for reaching out. “I don’t know if you realize it, but you’re the only person right now in Jacob’s life who can tell him about his father. That’s something I could never give him.” She brushed Jacob’s bangs out of his eyes and looked back at me. “I’ve learned that God places people in my life at a time I really need them. I wish the circumstances that brought us together would’ve been different. I’m sure you do, too. But I’m glad to have met you and to know that you want to be a part of Jacob’s life.”
“Honestly, God and I have been on a break. Even though my grandmother tells me that I’m the only one on the break. Either way, what I’m beginning to realize is that I may not always understand everything, but my life can’t wait around until I do. I have to admit, I wasn’t so glad to meet you at first,” I said. “But later I thought about your coming to my house, and I begrudgingly admired the courage it took for you to do that.”
She smiled as she opened the door of her car. “It was a tough day. For both of us.”
“Wait,” I said, remembering the gifts I needed to give her. I handed her the package from Babycakes and told her that it had to be reordered after Wyatt originally ordered it, and it didn’t arrive until weeks after he died. “This one,” I said and handed her the other gift, “was . . .” I had to clear my throat, and this time I really couldn’t stop myself from crying. “This was in Wyatt’s car when they found him that morning.”
She gasped as she took the gift from me, placed it on her driver’s seat, and hugged me. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea that you’ve been burdened with this since Wyatt died.”
“I’m glad Jacob fell asleep,” I said as we both sniffled and wiped our tears away with our hands. “He might’ve thought going on picnics was ve
ry sad for the two of us.”
We said good-bye, and I started to walk to my car when she called my name. “Olivia, don’t ever sell yourself short. You have more courage than you realize.”
CHAPTER 56
What did I have to offer Evan or any man for that matter if I was still trying to figure out who I was? Maybe the time had come for me to not define myself by the man in my life.
I didn’t want Evan to think that he was responsible for my avoiding him. Even if all I walked away with was our friendship, it was important to me that he knew everything that had been going on in my life.
After my run the next morning, I called Evan and left a voicemail asking if we could meet for dinner when he returned. I was on my way to my grandmother’s to tell her the story of Jenny and Jacob when Siri read his text message to me: Might be here longer than I expected. Will get back to you.
Well, at least it wasn’t a “forget you ever knew this number” message. I had no idea where here was nor whether he’d get back to me in a day a week or a month, but I knew Evan was a man of his word.
I found Ruthie kneeling on a foam pad in her front yard, yanking weeds out of her garden. Too late, I realized why she was so excited to see me.
“A brand-new pair of gloves that should fit you perfectly,” she said, smiling as she handed them to me. “I’m about to introduce you to the best and cheapest therapy you’ll ever have.”
“So where is he?” I asked as I pulled on the gloves that unfortunately did fit me. “This therapist of yours?”
She sat back on her heels, hands on her hips, and said, “Well, bless your heart. Do you think if he was here, I’d be in this yard pulling weeds?” Ruthie pointed to where she wanted me to start. “Now, what is all this news you had to tell me?”
With just a few water breaks in between, I finished telling her everything that had been happening, and she had a weed-free garden. “I’ll take those gloves. Come inside for some air-conditioning and carrot cake.”
After being outside, walking into her kitchen felt as if I were stepping into an igloo. My arms looked like they had been dusted with garden dirt, and even though Ruthie had given me a hat to wear, my face felt like it’d been steam ironed.
“I want a huge glass of water, but I’m passing on the cake. I’m too hot and too gross to think about eating anything.”
“That’s fine,” she said, handing me the water. “But you haven’t told me anything your parents said about any of this.” Ruthie sat with her water and a slice of carrot cake, and wiped her forehead with a paper towel.
I looked at the table and wished I had something to eat just to avoid making eye contact. “They don’t know anything except for one small piece of information.” I confessed my pre-picnic bomb dropping.
“Olivia Ruth Kavanaugh, that’s meaner than a bucketful of rattlesnakes. I know your mother has given you grief at every turn, but I don’t care anymore who started all this. Somebody needs to stop it. Even if that somebody is you. It’s time for you to prove to your mother that you’re taking control of your life. She doesn’t have to like it, but if you’re going to play her games, then you haven’t made much progress.”
Laura insisted on being with me when I talked to my parents. “I owe them and you that much, especially since they asked me to work at the insurance office. If they’re not going to be comfortable with that decision after we tell them everything, then we all need to get that straight now.”
I suggested we might want to have our worry beads with us. “Or if you have two more, bring them along. We could lower all of our stress levels at one time.”
“Not a bad idea, as long as you don’t think they might want to strangle us with them.”
I told Ruthie I wanted her to be a part of this, too, so she wouldn’t have to hear the story through my mother’s filter. A filter that needed to be changed more often than it was. It was Ruthie’s idea that we all meet at her house because it was neutral turf.
Since my spiteful remark the day I’d left for the picnic with Jenny and Jacob, my parents and I had resorted to well-orchestrated dodging of one another and the if-you-can’t-say-anything-nice rule. Ruthie said she pitied my father. “Poor man. He’s parted the Red Sea like Moses, making sure you and your mother aren’t engaging in fighting, but he can’t figure out how to bring it back together again.”
Laura took the lead. She called my parents and asked them to meet us at Ruthie’s, saying it would be best for all of us to be someplace different. “So no one has the home-field advantage,” she offered by way of explanation.
My parents said little throughout the entire unfolding of the Wyatt saga. Their reactions were mostly a gallery of expressions, from confused to shocked to sad and back again.
I told my parents that when I first heard the story from Laura, and after she had given me Wyatt’s last letter, I asked her to leave our house. “I was devastated that someone I trusted and considered a friend could be manipulative and deceitful. I had to get out of my victim mentality to see that Laura’s intention was never to hurt me. I may not agree with how she handled everything, but she acted out of genuine care for me and wanting me to know the truth.”
“And not that anyone here’s asked for my opinion,” said Ruthie, who put her arm around Laura’s shoulders, “I don’t think you and Scarlett should hold any of this against this young woman. We all know that she was the best person we could have had to take care of Scarlett after her surgery.”
“I appreciate your vote of confidence,” Laura told Ruthie. “But,” she said, turning to my parents, “I understand if you want to rethink your offer of my working for you in light of everything Olivia and I told you tonight. I want you to be able to trust me. If you can’t, I understand.”
“One more thing,” I said. “Maybe this would be better said at another time, but since we seem to be working on forgiveness tonight . . .” I moved so that I sat across from my mother. Her hands were folded in her lap, and I placed mine over them. “Ever since that night I told you and Dad I was pregnant, you and I might as well have been thousands of miles apart from one another. Maybe I don’t know or understand God the same way you do, but I don’t believe God wants us to use Him as a wedge between us. You’re my mother, and I never needed you as much as I did those months I was pregnant. I was stubborn, too, but I want to have a relationship with you. I hope we can forgive one another and move past all this. It’s up to you now.”
“Scarlett, it’s time for you to tell your daughter the other reasons why her being pregnant was so difficult for you.”
I looked at Ruthie, then at my mother. “More secrets?”
My mother shook her head. “I never meant them to be. I thought at some point, when you and Wyatt were planning a family, we’d talk. Then everything happened, and you were pregnant, and I didn’t want to tell you then.”
In between pauses for water and tears, my father’s arm around her shoulders, she told me about her four miscarriages in six years, all happening between six and seven months. How she’d decided she couldn’t endure losing another baby, and three months after her last miscarriage, she was pregnant again.
“I was devastated. I even told God not to make me wait and hope for months only to lose another baby. Just get it over with early. I don’t know how your grandmother and your father survived me. I was a miserable person.”
They both nodded.
“I was so afraid that pregnancy would end like every other one, I refused to be happy. And I put God on notice that if I didn’t come home with a baby in my arms, we were done.”
Ruthie laughed. “I’m pretty sure God got a kick out of that one.”
“Probably so,” my mother said and smiled softly. “Because you were the baby I came home with.” She reached for my hands. “When you told us you were pregnant, all I could think about was having lost all those babies and how awful it was for your father and me. And you were dealing with Wyatt’s death. You didn’t need any more stress hearing abou
t my miscarriages. Not then. And even though I still believe in God’s commandments, maybe in a different way than you do, I was wrong to shut myself off from you. Just like when I was pregnant with you, I couldn’t get past my fear.”
I hugged her, and she wrapped her arms around me, and I understood what my grandmother had told me: “In the end, you have to choose joy.”
CHAPTER 57
Do you want to meet me at JB’s Steakhouse or do I pick you up? I don’t know what your latest sensitivity level is when you hear the word ‘date.’” Evan sounded weary or frustrated or both.
“If you pick me up, it’s a date, but if I meet you there, what do we call it?”
“Look, Kavanaugh, I’m too tired to play semantics. I’ve been driving for the past six hours, and I’ll get home in enough time to shower and meet you or whatever. Just tell me what you want to do.”
“Then why don’t I pick you up? That’s an option in the twenty-first century.”
“You know, you’re absolutely right. Our reservations are for eight o’clock, so pick me up around seven thirty.”
With the help of even a little time spent running and Spanx, I wiggled into my favorite little black dress. A simple sheath with six narrow straps across each shoulder. I slipped on a pair of black ankle-strapped high heels and the pearls my grandmother had given me on my sixteenth birthday, and I almost didn’t recognize myself in the mirror.
My parents were eating dinner when I went to tell them I was leaving. My father actually whistled, and my mother smiled and motioned me to move closer. “You look beautiful, Olivia.”
I bent down and kissed her cheek. “Thank you,” I whispered.
I called Evan from my car to let him know I was in his driveway.
“You’re not coming in to meet my parents? They have about thirty questions for you, and they want to be sure I’m home before curfew.”
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