Softly and Tenderly

by Sara Evans

  Mama strained to open her eyes. “Jade-o, promise me you’ll talk to your dad. For me.”

  For Mama’s sake, he’d come to Jade’s wedding. For Mama’s sake, she could promise to call him. “If I say no, then you’ll have to keep on living.”

  “If you say no, I’ll die with a wound in my heart.”

  Jade knelt by her side of the bed. “Maybe we should just let things be, Mama. They are the way they are for a reason.”

  “Jade, try.” Mama tugged on Jade’s pinky finger, the one with the ring. “Promise me.”

  “Aren’t you the one who told me not to cling to things in life that aren’t making me happy? Or benefiting me? I should move on when the moving was good?”

  “Jade-o, my roots-in-the-ground girl. Moving on is not for you. You need to be stable, in the same place, day after day, year after year. Leave the wandering to me and Willow.”

  “I’m tired of being grounded, Mama. I get stepped on.” Jade studied the ring’s shades and depth of green in the light. Next to it, her ring finger was stark and barren. She’d forgotten again.

  Jade brushed the tears from her cheeks.

  “You pull up roots too quickly, Jade-o, and you’ll wither. You need the soil, sun, and rain, even the winds. Be strong. Bloom where you’ve been planted.”

  “What if I want to uproot and bloom in a new place?”

  Mama touched her cheek. “Then do it quickly. Know what came to my mind while I was in the hospital? Your sixteenth birthday party.”

  “Oh, please, what a nightmare.”

  “Nightmare? What party are you remembering? I’ll give you it started out slow, but—”

  “All right, it’s been five minutes. We’re coming up,” Carla called. Footsteps announced the approach of Mama’s friends.

  “Well, look at you all lounging around.” Carla came around and hugged Mama, Sharon and Elizabeth right behind her.

  Jade settled in the corner rocker. Mama’s eyes brightened as she engaged her friends. What made her think of Jade’s sixteenth birthday? She’d not thought about that night in a long time. She used to, though, when the afternoon was melancholy and she had nothing pressing on her mind.

  Mama was having fun with the girls. Hard to imagine she and Carla once duked it out at the Coltons’ the night Dustin broke up with her.

  Sweet sixteen. Spring had come early to the prairie that year, and as Jade approached her birthday, she dared to dream of a party in the barn and dancing under low lights in the arms of Dustin Colter.

  Paps’s barn was fragrant with last fall’s hay and the aroma of roasting meat. The beef and pork no one came to eat. In the hayloft, Jade laid on her back, staring at the dry, gray rafters, tears slipping down her cheeks to her ears.

  Stupid party. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  “Hey there, Jade-o.” Mama arrived over the edge of the loft. “Mother and I wondered where you’d hidden.”

  “Leave me alone.” Jade wiped her face, sniffling.

  Mama crawled across the hay and stretched out next to her. “At least you know who your friends are, right?”

  “What friends?” A fresh tide of tears washed her eyes. Tonight was humiliating. She’d invited the entire sophomore class to her birthday party. All last week kids stopped her in the hallway to tell her they were, “ready to par-tay.”

  Granny took two days off work to clean the house and prepare food. Mama came off the road from driving the truck to help clean out the barn while Aiden wired it for lights and sound, then dug a big fire pit by the western field.

  There was to be music and dancing. Barbeque and chips, with beans and slaw, cans of cold pop, and cookies, cakes, and pie.

  Even little Willow helped, collecting firewood for a bonfire. Granny bought all the fixings for two hundred s’mores. Jade had new jeans, top, and shoes for the evening. And this morning she went by Millie’s for a cut and blow-dry. For her birthday, Jade’s best friend Rachel paid for her to get a set of acrylic nails.

  But then Monday morning Shannon Bell arrived at school and tossed a grenade at Jade’s parade, announcing she was having a party this weekend, “for the heck of it.” She passed out hand-lettered invitations and promised big door prizes like a CD player.

  “Here, Jade, just in case no one comes to your party, you can come to mine.” Shannon had sneered a bit when she handed Jade an invite to her party. Why Shannon hated her, Jade couldn’t figure.

  “You could’ve picked another night.” Rachel had jumped in front of Shannon, shoving her back a bit.

  “But I liked this Saturday night.”

  “Witch.” Rachel called after her, but Jade dug her fingernails into her friend’s arm.

  “Leave her be. It’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not. She put on this party just to spite you.”

  “Why would she want to spite me? She’s got everything—head cheerleader, homecoming court, a new car, Dustin Colter.”

  “Never mind her, I’ll talk up your party and everyone will come. People will see right through that spineless bleach-blonde, phony, plastic . . . Besides, it’s your birthday, Jade.”

  But by seven thirty on party night, only Rachel and Coop had arrived. By eight, Jade’s girlhood friends Chelle and Lindsay showed up with David and Sticks. Being inaugural members of the Death Dragon—a club started by neighborhood bully Boon-Doggle when they were ten—they were bound by an eternal code. Initiation into the club required spending a chilling night locked in Boon’s daddy’s cellar. They had to choose Jade over Shannon. At least for a little while.

  But by nine, the party that never started was over. Even Rachel went home “to go to bed.”

  Jade rolled over on her side and wept against a clump of hay.

  “Are you crying again?” Mama touched Jade’s shoulder.

  “It’s my party, and I’ll cry if I want to.”

  Mama started singing, “Cry if I want to, cry if I want to,” snapping her fingers. Gag, she could be so annoying. Her voice grated like sandpaper. “I really should’ve been in music. Maybe my next boyfriend will be a musician.”

  “Why didn’t they come?” Mama’s musical aspirations aside, Jade sought comfort in her freewheeling mama.

  “Jade, you’ll make yourself crazy with that question. Do you really want to be friends with kids who chose a shallow girl like Shannon over a sweet, kind girl like you? You know, I bet she stuffs her bra.”

  “Mama.” Why did she say things like that? A snort sounded through her nose as she moved onto her back. “Supposedly she did in sixth grade.” Jade covered her snort with her hand. “I just wish I could be popular.”

  “It ain’t what it’s cracked up to be. In ten, fifteen years, the cheerleaders will be fat, the star athletes bald, the nerds richer than Donald Trump, and the girls like you will be running a Madison Avenue advertising company that pitches weight-loss programs and hair-growth products.”

  Now that was a pretty picture.

  “But you know what’s sad, Jade-o?”

  “What?” She sniffed.

  “You were so busy crying over who didn’t come, you didn’t appreciate the kids who did show up. You snubbed them while you watched the driveway for more cars. With five or six of my friends, we’d throw a party to beat the band.”

  “I’ve seen your parties. And you are popular. People come from all over.”

  “Including the sheriff ’s deputies.” Mama laughed.

  “Just want to see what all the fun is about.”

  Mama’s parties were famous. Every Fourth of July, her gypsy friends migrated to Prairie City, set up a tent village in the yard, and partied every weekend until Labor Day. People from all over the Midwest drove to the farm on weekends. They danced to their own melodies while reminiscing about James Dean, Bob Dylan, and Woodstock.

  “Everything is so serious with you, Jade-o. If it’s not exactly like you thought it would be, you think it’s a failure. What about the spectrum of colors in between?” Mama swept her hand in the
air, left to right. “You and Rachel could be getting down right now with Coop, who is downright cute if you ask me, and David or Sticks—watching him dance would be worth the price of admission—but you’re up here moping.”

  “I wanted him to come.” Jade grabbed a handful of hay and tossed it at Mama. Might as well confess, get it off her mind.

  “Him who?” Mama watched her for a moment, then said, “Ah, our knight in shining armor, Dustin Colter. You still got it for that boy?”

  “Maybe.” Ever since he and his buddies rescued Mama and Jade from the cornfield, she couldn’t forget him. And it’d been eight months. Then a few weeks ago he started sitting kitty-corner to her in Algebra 2.

  “How did you know Daddy was the one? Or Mike?”

  “Mike? The one?” Mama laughed. “He was sexy and got me pregnant. But your daddy, now he was special. He swept me off my feet. Never even saw love coming.”

  “Then why did it end?”

  “Haven’t we been over this? Don’t get maudlin on your birthday. Your dad and I grew apart, Jade. Our lives became about different things.”

  “I don’t want to ever get divorced.”

  “Then don’t. Granny and Paps lasted nearly sixty years. He’s in the ground, cold, and Mother still wears her wedding ring and refers to herself with the plural ‘we.’”

  “Can you know someone is right for you at sixteen?”

  “Mr. Right? At sixteen? Jade-o, there you go being serious again. Why not go for Mr. Right Now? There is no love like the first love, and you’re going to spoil it if you get all worked up and possessive, talking about forever or never. You’re only sixteen once. Date lots of boys. If it’s Dustin you want, go for it, but don’t get serious. Have fun. You’re young and beautiful.” Mama brushed straw from Jade’s hair. “These will be your good ol’ days.”

  Aiden’s shiny, gelled head popped over the lip of the loft. Jade knew he’d rather be at Shannon’s place with all of his friends, but he’d hung around Dullsville for her sake. She’d make him pancakes and bacon in the morning.

  “Dustin Colter just drove up.” He grinned.

  “Nuh-uh. You’re lying.” Jade scrambled out of the hay, shaking the yellow straw from her arms, and hung over the loft to see out the barn door. Sure enough, Dustin’s truck sat in the light of an ordinary utility lamp, the bed loaded with a dozen other guys.

  She couldn’t breathe. Her beating heart hogged all her air. Lights trailed down the highway, turning off 117 into Granny’s drive.

  Jade crawled to Aiden and gathered his collar in her fist. “Did you call them? Your friends, make them feel sorry for your loser sister? I swear to goodness, if you did . . .”

  “Are you crazy?” Aiden tugged her hand off his shirt. “You think I want my friends witnessing my sister’s lame party?”

  “Where’s the birthday girl?” Dustin stood in the barn’s opening, dark, curly hair flowing into his collar. His strength-robbing blue eyes swept up to the loft. “Is the party up there?”

  “I’m coming down.” Jade whipped around at Mama. “How do I look?”

  Mama smoothed Jade’s hair and straightened her top. “Perfect. Slip inside when you get a second and touch up your face.”

  Jade started for the ladder, but stopped before going down. “Should I let him kiss me?”

  “First kiss?” Mama angled toward her with her hands on her hips.

  Jade’s cheeks burnt deep as she nodded.

  “Then definitely. A sweet sixteen to remember. And if he don’t kiss you, Jade-o”—Mama winked—“you kiss him. It’s your night. The first night of many nights.”

  Jade paused two rungs down. “Mama, what if—”

  “Jade, go, stay loose. Have fun, for crying out loud, have fun.”

  Twenty

  June sank her hands into the hot, sudsy dishwater just as Jade entered the kitchen through the back door. Her daughter-in-law’s olive eyes were bright, her sleek, dark brown hair windblown. Holding her cell to her ear, she made a face and kicked the back door closed.

  “Kip, what if I write you a check to get started? We’re still going after the insurance money . . . Well, right, I know . . .” Jade stopped by the table, listening and exhaling, setting a Dairy Queen bag on the table. “So, that’s it, you can’t get to work now for another month? No, frankly, I don’t understand. We scheduled the repair weeks ago . . . Oh, come on, like we wouldn’t pay you . . . Whatever, yeah, next month . . . Don’t worry about my lost business, I’ll deduct it from your fees. No, Kip, I’m not serious . . . but I wish I were.” She tossed her phone into her purse.

  “Trouble?” June turned away from the sink to face Jade, wrapping the dish towel around her hands.

  “Kip took another job because he thought we weren’t going to pay. So he can’t start the Blue Two until late April or the first of May. It looks bad for the shop to be boarded up and closed for so long.” Jade slipped out of her jacket with a sigh and draped it over the kitchen chair, then held up the DQ bag. “Mama wanted a chili dog and a chocolate shake. June, you don’t have to wash dishes. I’ll get them, or ask Linc to in the morning. Never could get Granny to install a dishwasher.”

  “What? Not do dishes? I was standing at a sink washing dishes at my own granny’s house long before your parents even heard of the birds and the bees.” She glanced down at the suds. What was it about the white fluffy bubbles that soothed her? “I think I can wash a few dishes. Already done it twice now.”

  “I’d better get this up to Mama before it melts.” June nodded as Jade started up the stairs. She’d just turned back to the dishes when Jade popped back into the kitchen. “I forgot, a package came for you this morning when you were in the shower. L.L.Bean?”

  “Mercy, that was fast.” June dropped the dish towel on the counter and headed for the living room. “Why didn’t you tell me? Is it in here?”

  “On the chair by the door.” Jade followed. “Since when do you shop at L.L.Bean?”

  “Since my Louboutins keep getting stuck in the mud.” June returned to the kitchen with the package and cut open the box.

  “Heard from Rebel lately?” Jade popped the top off the shake and stirred the thick mixture.

  “Now why did you go bringing up his name?” June held a pair of jeans and a short-sleeved V-neck top up to her body, and watched Jade watch her. As if she were unsure what her eyes beheld, June asked, “What do you think?”

  “I think . . . not very elite Paris, but very Midwest prairie.”

  June refused to let the corners of her mouth slip as Jade offered moderate approval. What did it matter? June welcomed the change. “I’m going to put them on.” She pulled a pair of shoes from the box. “Ever see these before? Skimmers? They look comfortable.”

  In her room, June slipped from her slacks and knee-highs into her jeans and top, then slipped her feet into the red Skimmers. Ah, heaven just enveloped her feet. Walking around, trying out her new footwear, June gazed out her window.

  A wine-washed sky held on to the end of the spring day. The sunshine still hadn’t warmed the breeze much, but the trees and grass promised spring’s green.

  Hanging up her Whisper Hollow clothes, June paused, listening when she heard a sound like the clap of a car door. Was someone here? Jade’s voice floated down the hall from Beryl’s room in a steady tone. She’d not gone to the truck for anything. And Linc had gone for the night.

  Heading back downstairs, June peered out the second-floor window, seeing only the edge of Beryl’s lawn kissing the fresh harrows of Tank Victor’s field. Back in the yellow-and-red checkered kitchen, June retrieved a mixing bowl from the bottom cupboard.

  Though Carla and crew had left plenty of food in the refrigerator and a couple of pies in the pantry, June had a taste for cake tonight.

  She raised her head, listening, when a thump resounded from the porch. June shoved aside the curtain at the back door. No one was there. She shivered.

  Back to the business of baking, June opene
d the fridge for the eggs. She had in mind her granny’s from-scratch pound cake. And if she wasn’t mistaken, she’d spotted an ice-cream maker in the barn the other day. Homemade ice cream and pound cake. Her mouth tingled.

  This time the sound was definite. A knock. From the front door. June set the eggs on the counter. Must be Carla or one of Beryl’s friends.

  “Hello? Anyone home?”

  June froze midstep. No, please, no.

  The knock hammered the front door, intent on getting someone, anyone’s, attention. June gathered her courage, crossed the room, and flipped on the porch light. On the other side of the screen stood—

  “Mercy sakes, Rebel, what are you doing here?”

  His tie hung at half-mast. His tan overcoat sat askew across his shoulders, and his normally politician-stiff hair was a windblown mess.

  “I came up in the jet to talk some sense into you,” Rebel called. “Took a cab from the airport.”

  “You should’ve called. Would’ve saved you the price of jet fuel.” June walked back toward the kitchen. “I’m busy.”

  “Don’t walk away from me.” The screen door hinges moaned and balked. “I want to talk to you.”

  June whirled around. “I’ll walk away from you if I want, Rebel. You can’t fly up here, knock on my door, and tell me what to do.”

  Footsteps echoed on the stairs. “June? Is someone—” Jade bounded into the room. “Rebel, hey.” She stopped cold as she hit the invisible line of tension.

  “Jade.” Rebel shook his coat as if he’d been standing in the rain. He ran his fingers through his hair. “You might want to know the McClures are suing Max for custody of Asa. He’s in for the fight of his life over that boy. He needs you by his side.”

  Jade crossed her arms, then released their hold and rested her hand on the curved end of the banister. “Did he tell you to say that to me?”

  “He doesn’t even know I’m here.” Rebel squared his shoulders, propped his hands on his belt, collecting himself, getting into character. June had observed this routine a hundred times. “I counted you as a reasonable woman, Jade. Didn’t figure you for a quitter, leaving Max for an indiscretion he had before you were married.”