Justified

by Varina Denman

  “Great game, don’t you think?” She looked directly at my mother, dragging her into the conversation, and Mom’s eyes widened.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I didn’t go.”

  “How could you not go to the Trapp-Slaton game?” Ruthie grinned. “My cousin was amazing. He had those boys so pumped, they could’ve won the state championship last night.” She shrugged her eyebrows. “Too bad they only had the Tigers to contend with.”

  “JohnScott is doing an excellent job with the team, Ruthie. I’m sure you both must be proud.” Mother peered to the other end of the aisle, where Lynda stood with arms crossed, studying the fine print on a pricing sign.

  At the lag in conversation, Lynda turned her head hesitantly toward us. “Yes.” She swallowed. “Thank you, Susan. I’m extremely proud of that boy.”

  Ruthie must have decided she had tortured her mother long enough, because she tossed the toy onto the shelf with one last squeak. “Momma, we’d better go find Aunt Velma. She’s probably hiding a few aisles over so Fawn won’t see what she bought.”

  The four of us spoke or mumbled our good-byes, and as Ruthie disappeared around the corner, the last thing I saw was her hand. Who cares?

  My mother became energetic with nervousness. “Do you need anything else? Do you have enough bottles? You’ll need to sterilize several at once.”

  Her chattering seemed like an obvious attempt to prevent me from discussing Lynda Turner, but I figured I shouldn’t broach the subject in the middle of Babies “R” Us anyway. My abdomen tightened slightly, and I paused, waiting for the precontraction to ease. “I have three bottles, but I probably won’t use them much. I’m planning on nursing for the first year, at least.”

  Her fluttering ceased. “You’re not serious.”

  “Yes, Mother, I’m breastfeeding. Everyone does it now.”

  “But you won’t have time for that, with your school.”

  “I’ll be taking online classes mostly, so I won’t be away from the baby much. And when I have to leave him, I can pump breast milk for the sitter to use.”

  “Oh, Fawn … darling.”

  “That’s what I need. A breast pump.” I walked toward the feeding supplies section.

  “You want me to buy you that?” She said the words as though the mere mention might cause a naked breast to appear in midair.

  “You asked me what I need, and that’s it.” I squatted to read the packaging on three pumps, located on the bottom shelf.

  “Oh, Fawn, get up off the floor.” She pulled at the shoulder of my T-shirt and yanked the most expensive pump off the shelf. “Let’s go get coffee or something.”

  Fifteen minutes later, we sat in Starbucks, sipping iced latte and ignoring the proverbial elephant in the room. I wanted to find out what my father had been talking about in the church parking lot, and I knew she wanted to tell me, but after more than twenty years of ineffective communication, it would take us a while to unearth the details.

  I decided to sneak up on the conversation from a different direction. “So … Ruthie says you and Lynda went on a double date once.”

  Puzzlement showed on her face, but then her eyes clouded with memory, and she nodded. “A double date. Yes.”

  I waited for her to expound, but she only folded the corner of a napkin and lifted one shoulder. “Your father still thinks you should be with Tyler.”

  Not this again. “Does he not understand I’m old enough to make my own decisions?”

  “That’s a luxury few women can claim.”

  “Are you speaking from experience?”

  She stared out the window, where car after car eased past the drive-through. “I haven’t made a decision for myself since I was sixteen.”

  I rotated my cup. “When you married Dad.”

  “Even that decision wasn’t entirely mine.”

  “What do you mean?” I had long since learned that questions regarding my parents’ courtship were taboo, but I had always known they married when my mother was sixteen and my father was twenty-one. And that Mother was already pregnant. From recent revelations, I had deduced that my dad had been dating Lynda when he got my mother pregnant. Hence Lynda’s attitude.

  Mother twirled her straw in her cup until it honked softly, then she dropped her hands in her lap. “Your father means well, but he’s not good at communicating.”

  “That’s an understatement.”

  “He tries.”

  “Does he really? Because I don’t see it.”

  “He’s been trying lately … since things went bad with the church.”

  I sipped my drink, swallowed, then set my cup on the table. “Will he ever go back?”

  “I think so. I don’t know. Maybe.” She shook her head. “He’s always been a leader at that congregation … for generations. Now they look at him differently.”

  “They ought to.”

  She frowned. “Yes, Fawn, they ought to, but he is trying.”

  “Like the way he treated Clyde in the parking lot.”

  “It’s different with Clyde.”

  “How so?”

  Her face wrinkled painfully, but she didn’t speak.

  “I bet they had some kind of disagreement, and Dad can’t forgive him. Dad doesn’t do that. He holds grudges and remembers things forever and stews on them and gets angrier until he explodes.” I smirked. “As Lynda Turner could tell us.”

  Her head twitched as though she’d been struck, and I regretted my words.

  “I’m sorry, Mom. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “Maybe not, but you’re right. He doesn’t handle conflict well.”

  “He doesn’t handle people who won’t give him what he wants.”

  She blinked slowly. “No.”

  Out the window I noticed the sky darkening to a dull red. “Looks like dust is blowing in.”

  “Fawn, your dad loves me. In his own way.”

  My emotions clouded like the dusty sky. “Tyler is a lot like him.”

  “I know,” she whispered.

  Anger burned behind my eyes as another precontraction hit. “Yet you expect me to be with him.”

  She clasped her hands together, and her rings clinked. “He would take care of you.”

  Dirt skidded down the pavement, and I hoped the weather wouldn’t turn into an all-out dust storm. We could be stuck at Starbucks for a while. “Tyler represents everything I’m trying to get away from in Dad. I don’t want to live my life like you lived yours.”

  Her lips flattened before she snapped, “JohnScott Pickett has no money.”

  Heat spread from my sides, around my lower back, and over my shoulders. “What if I don’t care? I’d rather have happiness than material possessions. Is that so hard to believe?”

  “It’s unwise.”

  The air outside the window began to swirl with dust, and I could feel the temperature dropping. I scoffed. “You’ve lived so long with a man who pushed you down that you can’t imagine anything else. I know back then everybody married if they got pregnant, but adding one mistake on top of another is foolish. I’d be miserable with Tyler. Probably more miserable than you and dad. At least you guys loved each other when you got married. Tyler and I don’t even have that going for us.”

  My mother’s lips moved, but I didn’t hear what she said.

  “What?”

  “I didn’t love your father,” she whispered. “And I didn’t want to marry him.”

  The scent of dust and coffee filled my nostrils. “What do you mean?”

  “I hardly knew him when we married.”

  “But you grew up in the same church. You’d known each other your entire lives.”

  She twisted her hands, avoiding my gaze. “He was older than me and had been away at college. I had my friends and he had his.” Her eyes fog
ged, and she mumbled, “Though Clyde was older too.”

  Dust plinked against the windows like sleet, and I shivered, but my mother stared at the table, unblinking.

  “Did you know Clyde?” I asked.

  “Yes.” She peered out the window but didn’t seem to notice the accelerating dust storm. “He was your dad’s age, but he didn’t go away to college.”

  I searched for a thread of understanding as a thick dust cloud blocked the sun. I could barely make out her Audi in the afternoon’s premature darkness.

  “Did you … date Clyde? Before you got married?” The idea was absurd.

  “He was different back then.” She seemed lost in memories. “But the same.”

  I did the math and frowned. “Did you date him when you were fifteen?”

  She blinked once, slowly, seeming to will me to read her mind. “No, I dated him after I turned sixteen.”

  A cramp, more intense than the last, distracted me, and I couldn’t make sense of her words. I waited until the contraction passed. “But if you were sixteen when you dated Clyde …” I didn’t like the image forming in my mind. “What are you saying?”

  Her eyes were red, but there were no tears. “Clyde …” She swallowed, lifted her chin, shook her head.

  My jaw dropped, and I slumped against the back of my chair as gears turned in my mind.

  Her spinelessness infuriated me, and I gritted my teeth as my life began to make sense. Why my parents had such a stilted relationship. Why my dad treated me as though he didn’t love me. Why my mother seemed so distant yet desperate to show love. Always in the wrong ways. Always too weak to stand up to my father. “Say it.” My voice rose, mirroring the screeching wind outside the coffee shop.

  She took a shallow breath. “I’m too ashamed.”

  My anger exploded, triggering another contraction, and I began to wonder if the pains were real labor, but I didn’t have time to think about them. “What are you ashamed of?” My hands trembled. “Ashamed of getting knocked up by Clyde Felton or marrying Dad or lying to me for twenty-one years?”

  “All of it!” She threw up her hands. “I’m ashamed of the way your dad treated you, and I’m ashamed for allowing it. I’m ashamed of staying with him all these years.”

  “Why did you?”

  “What could I do? I have no family left. No money. Your father has control of everything.”

  I envisioned Ruthie and Lynda working blue-collar jobs. “We could’ve managed.”

  She dabbed her eyes with her fingertips. “I can’t live like that. I’m not strong. I’ve never been able to stand on my own.”

  A tear fell from her cheek onto the table, but I felt no compassion, no connection. I wanted to shake her.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Clyde long ago,” she said. “Your dad wouldn’t let me.”

  And of course she wouldn’t stand up to him. My posture drooped from weariness. “So why do you keep insisting I marry Tyler? It seems like you would understand if anyone would.”

  “He’s the father of your baby. I assumed you loved him.”

  A preposterous idea swept through my mind, illuminating the truth like a spotlight. “You love Clyde.”

  Her head shook back and forth once, almost imperceptibly. “Then. Not now.”

  I sighed, finally understanding her motivation for the way she had been treating me since I had gotten pregnant. “You didn’t marry the man you wanted, so you’re trying to figure out the man I want.”

  “You deserve to be happy.”

  “JohnScott makes me happy.”

  She rolled her eyes and glanced out the window, finally seeing the storm. “Oh, good Lord.”

  As she stared at the thick wall of dust, I stared at her, seeing her for the first time. I wondered who she really was, beneath all the makeup and lies. I might never know.

  “So, I’m assuming you married Dad for his money? And turned your back on the love of your life because you were too good for an ex-con—”But wait. Twenty-one years ago, Clyde hadn’t even been to prison yet. My stomach tightened in disbelief, and nausea swept over me. “You? You were the statutory rape victim.”

  She picked at something beneath her thumbnail.

  “You accused him of rape because you were too embarrassed to be with him?”

  “No!” She glared at me then, her timidity shoved aside. “I loved him, and I gladly would have left my family to be with him, but my father wouldn’t hear of it. He had Clyde arrested before I had even been to the doctor for a test.”

  “You could have fought it.”

  “I was sixteen, Fawn, and ashamed and alone and terrified.”

  Her adjectives knocked the wind out of me, and I nodded in understanding. I knew what that felt like. “You married Dad so he could take care of you.”

  A bitter puff slipped through her lips, far from a laugh. “Did I marry him for his money? No, Fawn. The Blaylocks didn’t have two dimes to rub together. Mr. Blaylock ruled the church, and my father ruled everything else, and when the two of them got together, they worked out a plan that would be … best for all concerned.”

  A constant ache had settled above my thighs. “Explain.”

  “My daddy gave Neil the ranch.” She tapped the table with two fingernails. “He gave him the ranch and married me off to a man so Christian, nobody would doubt us.”

  I covered my face with my hands, not wanting to believe her crazy tale, even as the jagged pieces of my life finally fell into place. It all made sense now. Almost. “Why did no one ever mention this to me? Half the town must know the truth.”

  “Nobody knew. Clyde and I kept our relationship a secret because of my parents. Then my father used his political connections to have Clyde jailed away from town, and nobody asked what happened to him.” She shrugged.

  Injustice flamed through my veins, and I snapped at her. “Surely the news would have gotten around Trapp. There would have been police involved, and judges, and jurors.”

  “My father bought them all.”

  “But someone in Trapp must have known. You could have been seen together.”

  She sighed and nodded. “Before I got pregnant, Clyde and I double-dated with Lynda and Neil. They were practically engaged. I remember them telling us to wait. Clyde and Neil were good friends.” She shook her head. “Even after my father ruined all of us, Lynda promised not to tell. Probably more for Clyde’s sake than mine.”

  My eyes finally filled with tears as I saw myself in my mother. A vain, spoiled rich girl, so insecure she couldn’t see the good in herself.

  She fumbled with her necklace. “You’ve changed, Fawn. I don’t even know what to think of you, but I know you’re going to be all right.”

  “We’re both going to be all right.” A strong contraction overtook me without warning, and I gripped the table as the pain radiated around my midsection and settled in my back. Just when I wanted to cry out, a balloon burst inside me, and water ran down my legs, splashing to the tile floor.

  Chapter Forty

  I settled back into the chair, more out of fear than pain. The novelty of childbirth intimidated me, but starting it in a coffee shop during a dust storm brought me close to terror. After my water broke, the contractions came closer together, and I leaned against the window, where sand scratched as though etching the glass.

  Mother sat across the table, wringing her hands. “Are you all right until the storm blows over? Labor usually takes hours.”

  “I don’t know. I’m scared, Mom.”

  I slid my cell phone out of my purse. JohnScott had made me swear I would call him, so I tapped the screen, chastening myself for not adding him to my Frequently Called list. It hadn’t seemed important.

  He picked up and started talking without saying hello. “I hope you’re indoors somewhere. This is a bad one.”

 
The sound of his voice prompted a juvenile reflex inside me, and I yearned to be coddled—lifted out of this harsh, unpredictable situation and transported to safety and shelter.

  Another spasm hit, and I held my breath.

  “Fawn? Can you hear me?”

  “I’m here.” The phone slipped in my sweaty palm, and I gripped it tighter. “We’re at Starbucks.”

  “Oh, that’s right, the shopping expedition.” He chuckled. “Well, at least you’re somewhere with food. Believe it or not, I’m stuck in Cliff Worlow’s barn on the far side of Slaton, and we can’t even get to our trucks. They’re a mile up the road.” His voice drawled lazily. “I can’t complain, though, I’m lying in a bed of hay.”

  When I didn’t reply, he repeated, “Can you hear me? I don’t think we have a good connection.”

  An agonizing wave cinched the nerves in my lower back, causing me to squirm in the chair, and I whimpered involuntarily. “JohnScott? I’m in labor.”

  Disbelieving silence filled the phone for three seconds. “Are you sure it’s real labor?”

  A break in intensity allowed me to take a much-needed breath. “My water broke.”

  “How far apart are the contractions?”

  “A few minutes, I guess.”

  “Can you get to the hospital?”

  “We can’t even see the car.”

  “Tell your mom to call 911.”

  “Someone already did.” The pitch of my voice embarrassed me yet, at the same time, felt like a cleansing release of fear and tension. “JohnScott, I’m scared.”

  “You got this.” He sounded as though he were deliberately calming his voice. “Women have babies all the time.”

  Fine-grain dust crept through the crack between the doors of the café, blowing across the tile floor to pile against the counter. “Not like this, they don’t.”

  “Aw, you’re a West Texas girl. What’s a little sand gonna hurt?”

  Another contraction began its slow anguish across my body, and my muscles tensed as I anticipated another crush to my spine. My abdomen tightened, and amniotic fluid trickled between my thighs and onto the floor. A man across the room craned his neck, and humiliation suffocated me as the pain intensified.