Mama raised a questioning eyebrow while everyone turned to listen. If he weren’t so tense, Reuben would have laughed at her attempts to describe his new job in layman’s terms.
“That’s about right. I’ll be overseeing an upgrade of the computers in City Hall and then getting the system there to ‘talk’ to the computer systems in other city agencies, so that there’s more efficient functioning across the board. It’s almost like building a new bridge but still using the old bridge until the new one is ready. For a while, you have two bridges standing side by side. When the new one is sturdy enough, you have to build an off ramp from the old one onto the new one, without people noticing much difference in their efforts to cross from one side to the other.
“After that project’s finished, I’ll draft a strategic plan for revamping internal communications for city employees and improving citizens’ access to online services and products.”
Aunt Melba leaned toward Reuben and hugged his neck.
“Congratulations, nephew,” she said. “Sounds like an important job, but it’s not quite as exciting as working for Amazon.com is it? You sure you’re ready for small-town life again?”
Mama glared at her sister. “Of course he is, Melba. Besides, what’s more important than being with your family?”
Mama approached Reuben and steered him to a chair on the left side of the long, cherry table. “Sit here, between your sisters.”
She motioned for Indigo and Yasmin to fill the seats that flanked him. Yasmin rolled her eyes and trudged to her designated spot.
Indigo leaned against the cherrywood buffet and folded her arms. She remained expressionless, but Reuben knew an attitude when he saw one. Max pulled Indigo toward the table and led her to the chair on Reuben’s right. He sat on the other side of Indigo and continued to hold her hand under the table.
Now that Mama had everyone positioned where she wished— her three children and Max on one side of the table and her sister Melba, niece Rachelle, and Rachelle’s husband Gabe on the other—she beamed.
“Wait until I tell your uncle Herbert.” Mama glanced at Rachelle. “You haven’t called your father, have you? I want to be the first to let my brother know that my baby’s moving back home.”
Reuben saw Gabe nudge Rachelle with his elbow.
“I wouldn’t dare steal your thunder, Aunt Irene,” Rachelle said, struggling to keep from laughing. “I know how excited you are.”
“Everybody does!” Indigo said in a lighthearted tone accompanied by a wide, plastic smile.
Reuben hadn’t spent much time with her during his return trips over the past four years, despite his efforts, but he knew Indigo well enough now to recognize the frustration that had reared its head earlier in the day, during lunch.
He leaned toward her, prepared to call her on it. But Aunt Melba chimed in first, with a raised eyebrow.
“Yes, Indigo, you’re right. Your mama is excited and so is the rest of the family. We can’t wait for Reuben to move back with Peyton and David.”
Reuben didn’t correct her. He and Peyton had called their son by both his first and middle names since Charles David was a baby, because he liked one name better and Peyton preferred the other. It had become second nature to them and to Peyton’s family, who lived on the outskirts of Seattle and saw the boy often. But Reuben’s relatives typically used David, despite Reuben and Peyton’s repeated reminders. Reuben had finally given up, assuming that they preferred to use “David” because that was his biological father’s name, and because Daddy (his grandfather) was also named Charles.
“We’ve missed having you around on a regular basis for a long time, Reuben, and it will be nice to have a young child to love on,” Aunt Melba said. “It’s a blessing when you can still come home and find your family intact. And it’s a blessing when that family welcomes you with open arms. That’s what we’re doing.”
Aunt Melba winked at Reuben, then extended her arms to grasp hands with Rachelle right next to her and Yasmin across the table. “Want to bless the food, since your dad isn’t joining us for dinner tonight?”
Reuben held his breath when all eyes fell on him. The grace he usually said with his son—“Good food, good meat, good God, let’s eat!”—would not go over well with this group.
He noticed a hint of a smile on Indigo’s face. She wanted to see him squirm, and she was having her way.
He coughed.
Max leaned past Indigo and grinned at him. “Mind if I say grace in your honor tonight, man?”
Reuben could have kissed the brother. “Go for it.”
Everyone clasped hands and bowed their heads. Indigo held his hand loosely and Reuben’s heart constricted. He got the message: she might be forced to be in his presence, but she was going to use every chance she got to let him know she wasn’t enjoying it.
When dinner was served, his sister kept her eyes on the roast, garlic mashed potatoes, corn, and greens that Mama had whipped up in just hours. He usually wolfed down the traditional southern fare, but tonight, not even the hot buttered rolls could take his mind off of his nagging fears.
He wanted to pick a fight, to get whatever was bothering Indigo 18 out in the open. But they weren’t kids anymore; there was no guarantee that pushing her buttons would yield the results he longed for—reconciliation, love, and friendship.
He’d been trying to figure out for months how to crumble her wall of resentment. Nothing had worked, and Mama’s excessive joy tonight was only making things worse.
Reuben decided to change the subject, hoping that for once, it might penetrate her shell. “How are the wedding plans coming?” he asked.
Indigo shrugged and took another bite of food. Reuben took the cue and decided to leave her alone. He turned toward his baby sister.
“What’s new with you, Miss Yasmin?”
The teenager mimicked her sister’s nonchalance. “The same ol’ same ol’.”
He must have lived in Seattle too long—this chick was talking in code. “Excuse me?”
Yasmin sighed. “I keep forgetting you’re thirty-one. Let me translate: The same old, same old stuff. Nothing’s going on since Mama and Daddy decided that they still want me to be their baby and stay under their thumbs. I’ll start my senior year of high school in three weeks, but in the meantime, I’m just watching summer wind down. I helped Aunt Melba at the hair salon today and came home to hear your wonderful news.”
Reuben sat back and folded his arms.
“Yasmin, that was out of line.” Cousin Rachelle laid down her fork and frowned in surprise.
Yasmin smirked, seemingly at no one in particular, and took a long sip of sweet tea before responding to Rachelle. “The truth will set you free.”
Reuben peeked at Mama and awaited her response. Neither Mama nor Daddy tolerated disrespect. He remembered receiving threats of a spanking at seventeen.
But Daddy was in bed this evening, resting and trying to get his blood pressure down. And Mama was intent on doting on her son/grandson, oblivious to the blanket of tension her praise was knitting. She took a bite of her potatoes and kept her head lowered.
Rachelle’s eyes blazed. Gabe elbowed her in the side again. He looked at Reuben and reassured him with a smile.
“Man, now that you’re leaving Amazon, does this mean no more free shipping? No more free gifts? Think about your cousins! You sure you want to give up that great job to move to Jubilant?”
This time Rachelle elbowed him.
“You moved here from Houston to practice small-town medicine, doc,” Reuben said. “What’s the problem?”
Both men laughed. Reuben was grateful for the camaraderie.
“It’ll be good for Charles David to have family close by,” Reuben said. “He’s at the age where he’s asking more questions about where I grew up and what you guys are like. Plus, if we’re going to leave a place as familiar to Peyton as Seattle, she could use some extra help every so often.”
Rachelle nodded, and Reuben rem
embered her offer to ask her daughter Taryn, who at a year older than Yasmin was already in college, if she’d be interested in a part-time babysitting job when Peyton and Charles David arrived.
“Taryn loves kids. I think I told you that she volunteers in the nursery at church. She said she can help you guys out some once you get settled, and there’s no need to pay her. She’s only taking fifteen hours in the fall, because she’ll be a cheerleader this year.”
Reuben grinned. “Your baby is an Everson College Egyptian? My, my, my. I remember when I used to go to games just to watch the halftime performances with the dancers and cheerleaders . . .”
“My goodness,” Indigo said sweetly. “As long as you’ve been gone, it’s funny that you remember anything about this place.”
Reuben turned toward her. “Indie, let’s talk—”
Mama jumped to her feet. “Let’s have dessert. I made a German chocolate cake and a peach cobbler. Indigo, can you get them for me, from the kitchen?”
Reuben sucked his teeth.
The pinched smile plastered on Mama’s face couldn’t mask the fear in her eyes. She saw this family feud brewing, and she was doing her best to halt it. But sooner or later he and his sister were going to have it out.
Just because he’d been gone for a while, living life on his terms, didn’t mean he couldn’t ever come home. He had a right to be a part of this family as much as she did. If his presence was bugging her, she’d better grow up and get over it.
In thirty days he was returning with his wife and son, ready to join the mayor’s staff and become part of the fabric of Jubilant. Indigo wasn’t going to make him regret this move. Too much was at stake.
4
It takes a lot of energy to stay mad at someone, girlfriend.”
Indigo had an angry retort ready, but knew better than to utter it. Had Rachelle been talking to her friend Shelby? Or to Max? Regardless, Indigo knew her favorite cousin was right: nursing her animosity for Reuben was distracting and draining.
She couldn’t help it, though.
“He can do whatever he wants, without being called on it,” Indigo said. “Go off to college and return a decade later—no questions asked. Uproot his family from his wife’s hometown and return here as some kind of hero—no explanations necessary.”
Indigo chucked the silverware from the evening meal into the dishwasher while Rachelle stood next to her, scrubbing Mama’s large pots and pans. Indigo thought about the advice she still needed from Mama but hadn’t had a chance to pursue.
“Everything is ‘Reuben this’ and ‘Reuben that’! He’s coming home—great. But does that mean the rest of us don’t matter?”
Aunt Melba paused from tucking a covered dish in the fridge and turned toward Indigo. She put a hand on her curvy hip. “Indigo, are you sixteen or twenty-six?”
Indigo stole a glance at the door leading from the kitchen into the hallway. As defiant as she felt, she would be ashamed if Mama walked in and overheard this conversation. Strains of dialogue from Mama’s favorite syndicated TV western, The Lone Ranger, wafted from the family room. With the masked ranger and Tonto entertaining her, Indigo knew Mama was oblivious to the banter— soon to be lecture, it seemed—taking place in the kitchen.
Indigo sighed and plopped into a chair at the oblong kitchen table. She was near tears. “I know I’m acting childish,” she finally said.
“And selfish?” Aunt Melba asked.
That diagnosis stung. “Why do you say that?”
Aunt Melba and Rachelle joined her at the table.
Rachelle reached for her hand. “Indie, you’re the one who convinced Reuben to attend the family barbecue for the first time in years, just before you left for grad school. Didn’t you want him to come back home, to be part of the family?”
Indigo nodded and let the tears fall.
She peered this time toward the door leading outside, to the patio and backyard, where Reuben had joined Max and Gabe for a game of basketball. If any of them walked in right now, she’d be mortified.
“I thought that’s what I wanted. He’s my only brother, and his absence left a big hole in Mama and Daddy’s hearts. I just wanted them to be happy, to heal. Yasmin didn’t remember much about him because she was only six when he went off to college. But I missed him, and I was hurt when he never really came back. He called and wrote to me sometimes, but he was never part of the family again. I thought his coming back four years ago would make us whole again. Hasn’t happened.”
Aunt Melba reared back in the chair and folded her arms. “Go on.”
Indigo wiped her wet cheeks with her thumbs and shook her head.
“What more can I say? I don’t know why I’m tripping. I wanted him to be part of the family, but I guess I feel like it’s been too easy. No one has bothered to ask him why he left in the first place. And he’s never apologized or even explained his long absence. It hurt, Aunt Melba. I just feel like he breezed out and breezed back in and gets the royal treatment regardless of how much pain his estrangement caused us.”
Aunt Melba smiled. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Keep talking.”
Indigo frowned. She didn’t know how to explain herself without sounding more juvenile than they had already accused her of being. She felt like a volcano, and what was erupting left her vulnerable. “It was fine for us all to be wrapped up in ‘Reubenmania’ when he first returned, but Mama and Daddy still haven’t come back to earth. I’m planning my wedding—that’s a big deal to me—and I can only get Mama’s halfhearted attention because she caters to Reuben’s every whim. If he calls, she’ll get off the phone with me or send me to the family room with Yasmin. If he’s in town, our scheduled plans get postponed. That happened today—I asked her to meet me for lunch so we could discuss something important, but he came with her, and I’m still not any clearer about the choices I need to make. I’m just not ready for more of that when he moves here.
“If it’s not Reuben, she’ll make it her business to entertain little Charles David and help Peyton adjust to her new surroundings. That’s all good, but I still need her too. Is that selfish?”
Rachelle and Melba looked at each and burst into laughter.
A fresh lump formed in Indigo’s throat. They’d never made light of her feelings before.
When Rachelle had composed herself, she reached for Indigo’s hand again.
“I’m sorry, Indie,” she said between breaths. “We’re not laughing at your concerns. That ‘Reubenmania’ thing got us. Where on earth did that come from?”
She laughed again, and this time, Indigo chuckled. She hadn’t meant to reveal the secret terminology.
“That’s what Shelby and I coined the . . . the hysteria Mama and Daddy seem to find themselves in whenever it comes to their son.”
“That’s a good one,” Aunt Melba said and grinned. “We’ll keep it to ourselves. Back to the issue at hand, though. Your feelings are a bit selfish, but—” she raised her palm to silence Indigo’s protest, “—they are understood. Your wedding is a big deal. You deserve to have extra-special support and attention during this time. And I agree, Irene and Charles have been swooning over Reuben since he came back into the fold. But they’ll get over it. They’re just trying to reassure themselves that he’s here to stay this time, and I think his move back to Jubilant will help.”
Indigo hugged herself. “I don’t know if it will help or make things worse.”
“Want me to talk to her about how you’re feeling?” Aunt Melba asked. “Have you even tried to talk to her?”
“No,” Indigo said. “I haven’t wanted to make her feel like she has to hide her joy. Mama deserves to be happy. It’s just hard for me not to feel like it’s at my expense, and even Yasmin’s.”
“Well, I’m happy to say something subtle to her,” Melba offered again.
Indigo didn’t know how “subtle” her aunt’s subtle would be: Melba wasn’t known for mincing words.
“Is Yasmin feeling this way too?
” Aunt Melba asked.
Rachelle pushed her seat back from the table and resumed washing dishes. “I don’t know what Yasmin’s issue is, but that girl is worrying me,” she said. “She’s got a big chip on her shoulder, and she’s even stopped coming to the church youth group meetings.”
Indigo nodded, thankful that the focus had shifted to someone else. She wasn’t sure whether Aunt Melba would say something to Mama, but she would leave that between them.
Rachelle was right, though—her baby sister seemed to be spiraling downward.
“Mama says none of Yasmin’s old friends, the girls she used to hang out with at St. Peter’s, call anymore,” Indigo said. “And she’s been caught sneaking out of the house twice. Does Taryn have any idea what’s going on?”
Rachelle squeezed the water from her sudsy sponge and attacked another pot that had been soaking in the sink. “Taryn stays really busy these days with the girlfriends she made in her freshman dorm. She and Yasmin still talk, but they’re not as close as they once were. Taryn says Yasmin is still angry that Aunt Irene and Uncle Charles made her stop modeling two years ago.”
Aunt Melba placed her palms on the table and pushed herself up from her seat. “These knees are getting creaky! I’ve started water aerobics to keep this body in shape, because walking on the treadmill was getting painful.”
Indigo marveled at how Aunt Melba, now in her early seventies, still looked a decade younger and had the curves that women half her age would kill for. Even after a stroke and now problems with her knees, she had a beauty, magnetic personality, and straightforward wit that drew others to her. Mama’s side of the family definitely had good genes. She hoped they would help preserve her too.
When Melba reached the sink, she took the pots and pans Rachelle had washed and dried and tucked them under the granite-topped island that served as the centerpiece of the kitchen.
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