by Maddie James
Sharon’s eyes filled, remembering how robust and healthy Ms. Addie was the last time she’d seen her. She cleared her throat and continued, “But God has blessed me with a very long and fruitful life and blessed me with more than I deserved by the people He brought into my life. You were most definitely one of His greatest blessings, as well as mine.”
Warmth surrounded Sharon as if Ms. Addie’s arms were encircling her. Hugs were something Ms. Addie had always had in abundance, and she was the only person in Sharon’s young life who ever bothered to make her feel worthy.
She sniffed and continued reading. “I’m writing you this letter today because I may not be able to tomorrow. I grow weaker by the day and know the Good Lord is about to call me home. I’m ready. Although many of the children who came to live with me for a period of time thought I lived in a mansion, I know the one waiting for me will make this place look like a shack in comparison.
My poor grandnephew will inherit this monstrosity as long as he’s willing to take care of my cats, (He’ll be so mad to learn that! Ha!) but I have other properties to disperse as well, and I have a special one just for you.”
Sharon was torn between amusement at Ms. Addie’s wicked sense of humor and the heart thumping anticipation of what was to come. She glanced up at Kyle, seeing he too was intrigued with the missive. She cleared her throat again, more loudly this time.
“There is a little cabin up on the mountain overlooking Legend Lake my husband took me to the night we were married. At the time it was owned by someone else, and we just rented it for that one night. But years later my love bought it for me as an anniversary present, and though it has stood empty all these many years, I made sure it was well tended and properly maintained. The appliances are old but functional. The plumbing recently updated. But it is yours, dear. Free and clear. To do with as you will.
I know you couldn’t get away from Legend fast enough all those years ago, and understandably so, but I also know the heart sometimes leads us back home. If you don’t want it, sell it. But if you do, you know you will always have a home to come back to. You can contact my lawyer at your convenience. His card is attached.
I know you are going to wonder why so many years have passed between my getting to meet my Maker and you receiving this gift. That, my dear, is because I know you. And I know you are not yet ready to consider coming back to Legend.
I’m tired now, and my hand grows weak, but I want to tell you one more thing. Whatever life brings, grab the good stuff and let the other stuff go. Even as many years as I have been given, it really was all over in just a blink of the eye.
Be well, my lovely. Be well.
Addie”
Sharon didn’t realize she was crying until Kyle’s arms were suddenly around her. She inhaled the scent of him and, for the first time in a very long time, remembered she was loved.
Chapter One
“Momma, you are not dying of cancer. But you will be if you don’t throw those things out and quit!” Sharon placed her hands on her hips and stared her mother down. She’d been home all of ten minutes and they were already arguing.
Candy stared back, a half-smoked cigarette dangling from lips smeared with fading red lipstick that leaked off her lips into the wrinkled skin below her nose and above her chin. She removed the cigarette from her mouth with two nicotine-stained fingers and blew out a long stream of smoke, then took a drink of dark amber liquid from a small tumbler. “I know I am. I’m tired all the time. And my chest hurts every time I cough.”
Sharon slid a glance around the filthy, smelly house, wondering if it had always been as bad and she hadn’t noticed, or if her mother had completely lost it. No, they had never had much, but Candy had always insisted on a clean house in the hopes a gentleman friend would stop by. Apparently she had stopped caring, or they had stopped coming. “Have you been to a doctor, Momma?”
“No. I don’t need some quack charging me to tell me what I already know.”
Candy slowly unfolded her ultra-thin body from the couch, her once robust form now saggy skin over lanky limbs. She’d dressed herself in a silver colored satin shirt she’d tied to show her slightly sagging belly and low riding jeans that showed her butt crack when she sat down. She ground the cigarette out into an overflowing, chipped, conch shell ashtray, ignoring the smoke that continued to spiral upward. Sharon was tempted to snuff it out completely, but she didn’t want to touch anything in the house.
Thank God for Ms. Addie’s gift. There was no way she’d house herself here, much less her son.
“I’m gonna go see if I can get a room at Legend’s Landing B&B, Momma, or if not there, I’ll get a room at the lodge for a night or two, until I get some things tied up. While I’m gone, you call your doctor and make an appointment for this afternoon. I’ll take you. Just call my cell phone and let me know when to come back for you.”
Candy turned to her, anger twisting her lips, making them look even worse. “What? You and that boy too good to live here with your momma?”
Sharon shook her head even though what her mother said was true, because she was too good to go back to the life she’d left behind. But it wasn’t the reason she couldn’t remain. “No, Momma. I can’t stay here because I’m afraid something will crawl out of the filth and bite me and my son and we’ll end up in the hospital, too. It’s no wonder you’re sick. This place is…sickening! I’m already getting a headache from the stale and new nicotine permeating the air, furnishings, and walls. Your house stinks, Momma. I’m not gonna lie to you about it.” She didn’t add that her mother stunk as well. That went without saying.
Candy stumbled her way across the room to put her face only inches from Sharon’s. Tobacco and whiskey rolled off her, making Sharon want to gag. “That’s a fine way to treat me after all I did for you.”
She coughed, choked on whatever it was she’d coughed up, and made horrible sounds that wracked her thin body until Sharon wondered if her bones might break. Sharon wanted to step back as Candy’s hacking resulted in spittle hitting Sharon’s blouse, adding insult to injury. It took everything she had not to scream out in disgust and anger. Nothing at all had changed and Sharon couldn’t believe her mother didn’t know what she’d done to her rather than for her.
Years of pinned-up frustration and hurt made her ball her hands into fists. “What was that, Momma? Are you talking about raising me in a house where I was known as that poor child whose mother whored around town? Or maybe, that I became a promiscuous teenager because I didn’t know any better, since you set such a sterling example? Or was it that you brought men into this house who thought they could visit my bedroom and get what they got in yours?
“Please, Momma, tell me just what it was you thought you did for me.”
Candy smacked her hard and fast, stinging her cheek. Tears smarted Sharon’s eyes, but she’d learned a long time ago how to hold them in. She turned toward the front door, relieved to see Kyle wasn’t hovering there, ready to leave and never return. But sad as it was, Candy was her mother. “Call me when you have your appointment, Momma.” With that, she walked out, wondering why in the world she still cared.
“She’s gross.”
Sharon couldn’t do anything but nod. It embarrassed her that Kyle had to see his grandmother looking and smelling like she lived in a dumpster, but there was nothing she could do about it. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“Why do you always do that?”
Opening the driver’s side door Sharon glanced across the Jeep as her son opened his. “Do what?”
Kyle shrugged while slinging his long frame into the seat. “You say you’re sorry all the time.”
Sharon sighed. “Because I don’t know what else to say.”
“It isn’t your fault.”
Not able to help but smile, Sharon nodded. “You’re right. It isn’t. She was a horrible mother. She still is. But she’s still my mother.”
“I know. But you apologize for Da…Gerald, too. That wasn’t your
fault either.”
Thinking she loved her son more than ever, Sharon nodded. “It was. I should never have married him. It was a mistake I’ve paid dearly for. But what hurts me the most is you are paying for it too.”
Kyle looked at her hard. “You didn’t have to lie to me about him being my dad. He never even cared about me. I always knew that. It would have been easier if I knew why.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Stop saying that!”
Sharon cringed and wanted so badly to reprimand him for talking to her with so little respect, but she knew she deserved his anger. “It’s all I have. I thought I was doing what was best for you. I realized early on I was wrong, but I was still just a kid myself and I didn’t know how to fix it. I really hoped if I did everything I could to make the best of things, he’d step up. I know now I was fooling myself. I really was trying to do the right thing, but it made no difference because he didn’t care. It took me too long to admit that. But never in my wildest dreams did I imagine he’d turn into the devil just to get out of paying a little support. Especially after everything I’d done to help him.”
Kyle crossed his arms and slouched in his seat while he stared a hole through the windshield. Sharon closed her door and started the Jeep, wondering how to fix what she’d so horribly messed up, knowing at each of life’s crossroads she’d taken the wrong turn. It was something she was going to have to correct immediately. Kyle needed her to, and she needed to for herself as well.
“Buckle up. I want to run to the local bed and breakfast and see if I can get us a couple of rooms, and then we’ll head up the mountain and see where the cabin is. I don’t have the keys yet but should have them by tomorrow, surely.”
“I want to meet my real dad.”
Sharon stopped in the middle of throwing the stick shift into reverse. She glanced over at her son, slowly shaking her head. “You can’t do that.”
Kyle lifted a brow and Sharon thought her heart would melt. His father had always done that when he was about to kiss her senseless. Shaking the memory away, she waited for the blasting that her son was about to give her.
“Yes. I. Can.”
His words were so calm and so evenly spaced Sharon knew she was going to have a fight on her hands. Her only option was to be completely honest. “I’m not sure he even knows about you.”
The brow dropped and both pulled together as anger filled Kyle’s eyes. “So you have been lying to him all along, too!”
One, two, three, four, five, six… “I haven’t seen him since I found out I was pregnant. I wasn’t showing and he never knew.” She didn’t add that Mr. Sanders had and basically ran her out of town, but on the off chance her son ever met his grandfather, she didn’t want to add additional hurt and anger to the possible relationship. There was already more than her son should have had to bear.
“Once I left Legend and married Gerald I saw no reason for him to know. We can’t go barging into his life now and tell him. I need time to figure out where he is and what his situation is. I know you want to meet him, but we can’t just jump into it.”
“Is he here? In Legend?”
“I honestly don’t know where he is. I’ll find out as soon as I can. But don’t get your hopes up. Last I heard, years ago, he was living somewhere in Florida.”
Hoping to put the conversation to rest, Sharon threw the Jeep into reverse and pulled away from her mother’s trailer. She bit her bottom lip as they slowly rode out the pothole-filled lane and breathed a sigh of relief when they hit the much smoother road that would lead them to Lake Road.
Coming back to Legend felt strange enough without all the memories. But so little had changed in the past fourteen years memories played out like a movie in her mind.
There was the church Ms. Addie always took her to on Sunday mornings. She’d gotten her first taste of Chinese food with Ms. Addie at that little restaurant, which still had the same, but now faded, sign. It was strange to drive by the same properties she’d seen back in the days she’d headed to the lake to swim with the boyfriend of the month and then finally with Kyle Sanders. Once they’d started dating and he’d declared his love for her, for a brief moment in time she’d known real happiness. Then her mother got caught shoplifting and was arrested, arraigned, and then sentenced to eleven months and twenty-nine days in the county jail on the very day Sharon realized her lack of a menstrual cycle and heavy sore breasts probably meant she was pregnant.
The Department of Children’s Services swooped in and took her to the county Health Department for a complete physical and blood tests and then followed that humiliation up with a dental appointment where the woman cleaning her teeth used sharp instruments that tortured her until her gums bled horribly. Her pregnancy was confirmed, she had three cavities, which the dentist said wasn’t so bad considering Candy Clark hadn’t ever taken her to the dentist, and Kyle Sanders wasn’t responding to her secret attempts to call him. Then, on the tenth or so attempt, Mr. Sanders answered and told her never to call his son again. Hurt, afraid, and desperate, she’d confessed to him that Kyle needed to know she just found out she was pregnant.
Of all the things that had happened since her mother’s arrest, Sharon knew the humiliation of her oral and other examinations would never compare to the pain of being told Kyle had about as much chance of being the father of her child as any of the other boys on the Legend Dragon’s football team did, and there was no way in hell she would ever see his son again. He’d finished his less than compassionate diatribe telling her if she tried to contact his son again he’d have her arrested and sent to juvenile detention, which was probably where she’d end up before her bastard was born anyway. And he’d ended the call telling her, just in case, he’d have enough funds sent over so she could terminate the pregnancy and save everyone a lot of headaches down the road.
Meeting Ms. Addie and going to live in the huge white house on the hill had been both terrifying and a relief. She’d been so afraid, but for the first time in her life, Sharon’s daily needs were taken care of by someone other than herself. Healthy meals were provided and her clothes didn’t reek with the stale cigarette smoke that permeated any rental home Candy Clark—or whatever married name she carried at the time—occupied. Ms. Addie had actually talked to her rather than at her, she’d empathized with Sharon rather than criticize her, she’d redirected Sharon’s thought process and self-worth so Sharon finally began to believe she deserved better treatment from others, as well as herself. Before those few months in the big white house were over, Sharon had felt loved. If it hadn’t been for Ms. Addie and her sense of humor and no-nonsense attitude about Mr. Sander’s unfortunate attempt to be a good parent to his son, Sharon knew she would have left Legend all those years ago with a great deal of hate in her heart. Instead, she’d departed sad, hurt, but with an understanding that, even though Mr. Sanders had been cruel to her, from his point of view he was just being a good dad. Since having her own child, she knew sometimes you had to think only of those you loved, even if it left others out in the cold. Even if it left her out in the cold, again.
Her last thought, before entering the open double gates leading to the home which Mrs. Schull had converted into a bed and breakfast sometime way back when, was she’d sacrificed any chance at love when she’d married Gerald. She’d done so in the hopes of giving her then unborn child a life of stability, as she’d seen no way to provide it herself. It was a sad testament to her sense of direction that it turned out to be such a disaster. In the end, it would have actually been easier had she never met and married the doctor-wannabe, since she would have only been supporting and caring for one male child, not two. Gerald was more needy than her child had been.
The large yellow Victorian home came into view and looked freshly painted, as it was as bright and happy a soft yellow as she remembered. Memories of that day so long ago nearly brought tears to her eyes, and she was happy to see Kyle had fallen asleep and wasn’t witnessing her drive down memory lane
as she pulled into the empty parking lot.
It could have gone so differently that day….
As the daughter of the town whore, wet and dirty from swimming in the forest-lined lake most of the day and obviously recently brutally beaten, her first and only visit to the bed and breakfast was because Mrs. Schull saw her walking Lake Road as she’d headed back to town. She’d just started dating Kyle Sanders and had denied Jimmy Wilcox sexual favors—which he obviously hadn’t appreciated at all, given his violent reaction. The kind woman had stopped and looked Sharon over as anger lit her eyes. Before Sharon knew what was happening Mrs. Schull got out, shoved her groceries out of the seat, and insisted Sharon come with her so she could help her. She’d ignored Sharon’s protest about getting her Honda dirty as well as protests that the swelling eye and bloody nose were nothing to be concerned over. In the end, the thought of walking all the way back to town in the horrible shape she’d been in had made the decision for Sharon. But instead of turning around and taking her to town, Mrs. Schull entered the gates leading to Legend’s Landing Bed & Breakfast.
Sharon smiled to herself. Unlike today where it was obvious no one was home, that day the house had been filled with noise. Four guests had been registered so the two adults shared one upstairs bedroom, and their twin ten-year-old sons occupied the only other room on the second floor. Since they’d been vacationing and visitors to the area rather than locals, the little family had treated her with deference and sympathy rather than disdain when she’d told them she’d been in an accident.
Mrs. Schull had simply looked at her and said nothing. But once the groceries were carried in, clean clothing appeared, a shower was offered, the most delicious meal she’d ever eaten before or since was consumed, then she’d been handed a bag of frozen peas to put on her swollen and bruised eye, and antibiotic ointment and bandages to take care of the scrapes and cuts since she’d refused to change her story or be taken to a doctor. Though she could tell Mrs. Schull wanted to change Sharon’s mind about that, she again said nothing. Instead she’d packed Sharon a bag filled with delicious homemade pastries, which sat on top of the outfit she’d worn from the lake. It had been washed, dried, and folded in a way so her shirt, shorts, and bathing suit looked like they should have been on a store shelf rather in a large brown paper bag. The most memorable thing in that bag was a piece of paper with Mrs. Schull’s cell phone number and a note saying to call her anytime she needed her. And then Sharon asked to be dropped off at the Piggly Wiggly grocery store in town because she’d been too embarrassed to have the nice woman take her to the rundown trailer park where they’d lived at the time.