He put his hands on her shoulders, forced her to move back. “Poppy. Go.”
She pointed a finger at Jillie. “What on earth has that tomboy got that could possibly interest you? Aren’t you the kind of guy who needs the real thing? Not some little girl pretending to be a grown-up?”
“You don’t have any idea what kind of guy he is, Poppy,” Jillie said, stepping up to stand between Tate and the other girl.
Poppy’s laugh was harsh at the edges. “Oh, I think I do,” she said. “He’s no different from the rest. One thing is what they’re all interested in. And don’t tell me you would have any idea how to give it to him.”
“Poppy—” Angela pulled at her arm, sounding suddenly more sober.
“Come on. Let’s go.”
Poppy jerked her arm away. “That’s just like you, Ang. You’ve had a crush on him for how many years now? And instead of taking the matter head on, you just stand back and moon over why someone like Jillie has beaten you out.”
Tate glanced at Angela, saw the way her face crumpled beneath the words. She turned and ran back across the yard.
“Angela!” Tate called after her, but she kept going.
Poppy laughed. “Why don’t you go get her, Tate? I’m sure consolation from you would just make it all better.”
Jillie stepped forward, shoved the girl backwards. Poppy landed hard on her backside, her dress ending up around her waist.
“What is wrong with you?” Jillie screamed.
Poppy looked down at her now-ruined dress, held her hands up as if she couldn’t believe what Jillie had just done. She finally got to her feet, gave Jillie a long, cold glare. “One day, you’re going to pay for that,” she said, and walked off.
“She’s a preacher’s daughter,” Tate said after a few moments. “What the heck?”
They sat down on the rock wall, a chunk of space between them now.
“Maybe I should go find her,” Jillie said.
“Angela?”
“Yeah. I suspect she’s pretty humiliated.”
He turned his head, looked at her for a long moment. “She might not take it so well from you.”
“Maybe not. But then there is something the two of us have in common.”
“What’s that?” he said.
“We both figured out early on that you were something special.”
He glanced away, wondered if she had any idea just how devoid his life had been of such statements. Sometimes, he couldn’t quite believe that Jillie could really feel anything for him. He looked at her then, leaned over and kissed her, this time holding nothing back.
Everything he felt for her was right there. Laid out as honestly as he could put it. When he finally pulled away, she smiled at him and said, “Me too.”
She got up then, walked across the dimly lit yard, stopping a short distance away to turn once and look at him again. They didn’t say anything. They didn’t need to.
28
Jillie
I SPEND THE next few days in a state of high alert. Other than a call from Ann thanking me profusely for sending her Tate as a client, I’ve heard nothing more of his move to Cross Country. I’m not sure what it is I’m expecting, but it seems something short of anticlimactic for him to be in such close proximity for the first time in so many years and not see him. But then, what else do I imagine might be in store for us?
We don’t really even know each other anymore. Whatever we’d once had is long gone, and I know nothing about his life now.
And so I try not to think about him, to go back to that point just a week ago when I lived with the acceptance that I would never see him again. It’s easier that way. Wiser, without doubt.
I put my concentration on my daughters, on being a good mother. With Corey, it is easy. With Kala, it is not.
If anything, she has become more distant, avoids me even. I try to talk to her about it, and she closes me out, unwilling to discuss what is bothering her. I try to remember the things I felt at her age. But it feels as though it’s more than teenage angst. Deeper. Blacker.
On Thursday night, I’ve just finished helping Corey with her homework. Spelling again, and she’s getting better at it. She’s just spelled Mississippi without missing a letter.
“I think that deserves an ice cream cone,” I say, closing the book. We’re in the backyard at the picnic table. Dusk has started to settle. “Why don’t you run up and ask Kala if she wants to go?”
Corey bounds off across the grass with a yip. Ice cream is at the top of her list of favorite things.
I get my purse and keys and head for the front door. Corey meets me at the bottom of the stairs, a little of the pleasure gone from her face. “Kala doesn’t want to go,” she says.
“Oh,” I say. “Did she say why?”
Corey shrugs. “Just doesn’t want to.”
I consider going up and getting her, but decide to let it go. Corey and I drive to the Dairy Queen where she orders a double vanilla scoop dipped in chocolate. I splurge and order the same. Corey finishes hers before we get back home. I eat half of mine and throw the rest away, deeply worried about Kala’s increasing distance.
Upstairs, I walk Corey to her room. “Time for bed, honey,” I say. “Go brush your teeth.”
“Okay. Thanks for the ice cream, Mama,” she says, kissing me on the cheek and then skating across the wood floor to the bathroom in her socks.
Kala is sitting on her bed, a book propped up on her knees. “Wish you’d gone with us,” I say.
She lifts a shoulder, doesn’t look up from the page.
I go over, sit down on the corner of the mattress. “Hey. Can we talk?”
She looks up then, doesn’t answer.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“Nothing, Mom,” she says in a voice that completely contradicts her answer.
I put my hand on her knee, squeeze once. “I can’t help, if I don’t know what it is.”
She throws her legs over the other side of her bed, her back to me, stiff and unyielding. Kala has always been a child from whom I have to pull answers. She keeps things to herself until the wear of it is clear on her face. “I don’t want to live here anymore,” she says suddenly.
I feel my heart wrench with the pain beneath the words. I understand how she feels. I don’t want to live here either. Nor do I want my two daughters to hate me when Judith poisons their minds with her version of what happened between Jeffrey and me.
I put my hand on her shoulder. “Kala. I’m sorry—”
She jerks around then, her face red with anger. “You’re sorry! You’re always sorry! Why can’t you just do something to make it different?”
“Kala—”
She erupts from the bed, hands on her hips. “I mean what do you do here all day, anyway? Aren’t you bored? Don’t you want to do something with your life other than answer to Grandma twenty-four seven?”
Each word is like an arrow through the center of my chest. Painful for the simple reason that they are bathed in truth. And too, for the realization that in my daughter’s eyes, I am a serious disappointment.
She’s right though. I have no idea who I am anymore. Any thread of the woman I had once hoped to be is so deeply woven into this existence I have managed to call a life that it is barely identifiable, even to me.
But how do I tell her the real answer? That I am trapped in a prison of my own making.
29
Kala
SHE HAS NEVER once spoken to her mother this way. Remorse seeps up like water filling her lungs, making her feel as if she can’t breathe.
Through the dark, she runs from the house to the barn, tripping once and nearly falling. She lets herself in one of the side doors, climbs the ladder to the hayloft where she sits above the top rung, peering down at the horses in their stalls. She’s woken them, but a minute later, they’re resuming their sleeping stance, one hind foot propped behind them, heads lowered.
She’d been so mean. Knows she hurt her m
om just now. But it’s as if she can’t help it. She’s just so angry. And it’s like this huge red tarp of fury covers everything she tries to do. No matter how hard she forces it back down inside her, it won’t stay, and it’s scary how it’s starting to take control of her.
She props her elbows on her knees, runs both hands through her hair. She should go back and say she’s sorry. But she’s not sure she can.
Because she really doesn’t want to live here anymore. And really does wonder how her mom can keep being her grandmother’s doormat. Available to wipe her feet on whenever she wants to.
She’s supposed to love her grandma. She knows that. But sometimes, people just make it impossible to love them. How many insults should a person swallow and accept as truth before there’s not a speck of space inside them for more?
This afternoon had been a perfect example. Kala had been working on her homework at the kitchen table when her grandmother walked in and made herself a cup of hot tea without saying a word. Once she’d poured a cup, she stood by the sink, studying Kala, her disapproving gaze settling on the three chocolate chip cookies lined up beside her notebook.
“You aren’t eating all of those, are you, dear?”
Kala glanced at the cookies, warmth flooding her face. “I didn’t have much lunch.”
Her grandmother made a clucking noise. “Girls who eat like that are destined to be fat. Haven’t we taught you better food choices?”
Kala’s gaze stayed on the page of the book she’d been reading, the words a blur. “Yes, ma’am.”
Her grandmother picked up the cookies, dropped them in the sink disposal. “Fat thighs are hardly attractive on a rider.” She opened the refrigerator door, pulled out a mini bag of carrots and put them in front of Kala. “A much better choice.”
Kala’s cheeks burn now with the replaying of the scene. It is not the first, however. And she knows it will not be the last.
Her mother endures the same kind of constant putdowns. Kala cannot begin to understand why.
She knows the story about her mother’s life before she got married. How she was this big-time, junior rider, made a name for herself on the jumper show circuit, until one day she just walked away and never went back. Or at least this was what her dad told her. Only she’s beginning to wonder if there is more to the story. She doesn’t see how someone could have a gift like that and just throw it away. Never look at it again.
Cricket, Corey’s pony, sneezes. Munchy, Kala’s gelding in the stall beside Corey, takes a long draw from the automatic waterer. It clicks on and refills, and then the barn is silent again.
More than anything, Kala wants to leave Stone Meadow. She’s thought about all the scary stuff. Will they have to leave their horses here?
Where would they live? How would her mother be able to afford to take care of them?
She has no answers for any of the questions. She only knows she has to go. Whether her mom and Corey do or not. She has to go.
30
Tate
SO HERE I AM.
Smack dab in the middle of a life I had once dreamed of having. And I have no idea what to do with it.
I’ve spent the past few days making the house livable. Buying some furniture for the living room. Table and chairs for the kitchen. King-size bed in the upstairs, master bedroom. All this, and still, it is a house that feels empty.
I grab a bottle of water from the refrigerator, go out back to the porch that looks across a pasture where thoroughbreds had once grazed. It’s empty too and something about this feels so wrong.
This place had once teemed with life and purpose. It is devoid now of anything remotely resembling that.
I sit in a rickety rocker and stare into the dark, flexing my left hand, grimacing a little at its stiffness. I’d paid a couple of guys from the hotel where I had been staying to drive my car over a couple of days ago. I managed to drive myself to the hospital yesterday, where a doctor had removed the bandages from my hands. Both are still sore, but I’m grateful to be able to use them again.
My thoughts turn to Jillie, as they have countless times these past few days. I’ve tried not to think about her, telling myself they have nowhere to go. Bitterness still sits like a rock in my chest, and I cannot imagine ever putting our past behind us. Some things are just too big, too painful to ever get beyond.
I hear a noise in the yard, peer out through the dark, but don’t see anything. Probably a deer. They graze in the yard at night, a herd of six or seven. I’ve spotted them at dawn when I get up.
I sit back in the chair, taking a sip of water. There’s the noise again. I stand this time, go outside, and walk into the yard. The light from the house allows for some visibility, and I think I spot something a few feet away. A soft whine, barely audible, lifts out of the darkness.
I go inside and get a flashlight, then come back out, throwing the beam across the backyard. Sitting in the grass is a little tan and white Beagle. Hunched forward and shaking. No collar. A bundle of skin and bones.
“Hey,” I say.
The dog scoots back a few feet, continuing to shake.
It’s warm outside, so I can only assume it’s scared to death. I drop down on my knee, lower my voice. “You want something to eat?”
The dog whimpers.
“Let me see what I can find,” I say, getting up and going back into the house.
I return a minute later with a can of chicken, from which I awkwardly manage to pull the lid. It comes off with a little pop that sends the dog scuttling back to a safer distance. I dump the chicken in a bowl, then drop down onto my knees and set it in the grass. The dog eyes it for several moments, then creeps forward, as if there are mines beneath its feet. On shaking legs, it gulps the chicken, as if it hasn’t had food in days.
As soon as the bowl is empty, the dog retreats in a whipflash to its former stance, sits and stares at me, still shaking.
“That took a lot of courage, didn’t it?”
The dog whimpers again.
I pick up the bowl, carry it over to the water spigot, rinse it out, then fill it and set it just below the porch step.
But this time, the dog stays where it is, apparently unconvinced the water is worth the risk. I wait for a good while, coaxing it forward without success. I finally give up. “All right. I’ll leave it there.”
I go inside the house, turning at the door of the screened porch to look back at the dog once more.
It’s still sitting there, watching me.
It occurs to me then that I have never in my life owned a dog, cat, or anything else requiring commitment. I could argue that I’ve never been in a position to care for anything other than myself. But then that’s not exactly true. The truth is I’ve lived a life free of such entanglements, because part of me believes attachments only lead to hurt.
I no longer remember exactly how many foster homes I lived in before I was finally placed with the Templetons here at the lake. But I do remember how with the first few, I had let myself start to think it might be permanent. Start to care about the people I lived with, their dogs and cats too. And always, I had to leave them behind. Each time, I left a chunk of my heart with them.
The last and final lesson had been Jillie. With Jillie, I’d torn down all the walls, made myself vulnerable in a way I never had before. I’d loved my life here. Leaving it, leaving her, had nearly killed me.
I leave the porch light on and go upstairs, wondering if the dog will still be there in the morning. Probably not. And, anyway, I should know that’s for the best.
31
Kala
SHE WATCHES FROM the pitch-dark edge of the yard, hunched down beside an enormous boxwood.
The little dog, a Beagle, maybe, sits for a long time after the man goes in, then finally darts over to the bowl and laps the water, as if it can’t get it in fast enough.
Kala waits until she sees the light flick off behind the drawn shade of the upstairs window. No one had lived here in years, and she is
disappointed to see that the house is no longer empty.
A few hours ago, she’d climbed into her bed with her clothes still on beneath her nightgown, pretending to be asleep when her mother came in to check on her.
When the house was quiet, she tiptoed around her room, throwing a few things into her bag and leaving a sleeping Corey in the bed beside hers. That part had been hard, but slipping out the back door of the big house at Stone Meadow, Kala felt a lifting of something she couldn’t even explain to herself.
She ran down the long driveway and out to the main road, where she’d walked the five miles to Cross Country, intending to spend the night in the little, white house where her mother had grown up, even if she had to break a window to get in.
She darts across the yard now, staying in the shadows, her backpack jostling on her shoulder. The grass beneath her shoes is wet with dew, and she’s afraid to turn on the small flashlight in her hand for fear the man will see her. She finds the board fence line and follows it to the horse barn, then darts across a paved parking lot bordering the little house.
She hears a noise behind her, looks back to see that the little dog is following her. It stays at a distance, stops when she stops. “You have to be quiet,” she whispers.
At the house, Kala goes around back, turning the flashlight on for a few moments to find her way. Three steps lead to a door. She turns the knob. It’s locked. She stands for a moment, thinking.
The door has a row of panes just above the knob. Would it be so wrong to break one? She could send money to pay for it later.
Right now, she’s so tired, and if she can just sleep for a little while, she’ll be able to figure out where she’ll go in the morning. She takes the butt of the flashlight and jabs it against the glass. It shatters, the sound so loud that she is sure it will wake the man in the big house.
The dog barks from its viewing spot several yards away.
Fences: Smith Mountain Lake Series - Book Three Page 10