Home Stretch

by Jenna Bennett

  Mrs. J, meanwhile, couldn’t tell me where she’d been going, in the middle of the night in bare feet and her nightgown. I thought there was something sort of sly in her expression, but it could have been my imagination. It was late—or early—and I wasn’t thinking straight. My back hurt, I was tired, and my feet were cold.

  And of course the ruckus woke up Mother, too. My mother doesn’t like to be inconvenienced, and this definitely counted, so she let me know. Then she flounced back to bed, her lace-trimmed negligee quivering, and left me to clean things up.

  I locked and bolted the door, and made sure it was secure. Then I got Mrs. Jenkins back to bed and tucked her in. Then I went to the bathroom—and none too soon, either. That done, I headed back to my own room. Before I crawled into bed, I went to the window and looked out. There was nothing to see. No people, no cars. A movement in the distance turned out to be something small moving across the dry grass; maybe an opossum or a raccoon. Or a stray dog or cat.

  Whatever it was, Mrs. Jenkins hadn’t gone out to meet it. And it didn’t seem as if she’d been headed out to meet anyone else, either. So she’d probably just been sleepwalking. Or had found herself awake in the middle of the night, in a strange house, and she’d gotten confused.

  I tucked my cold feet back under the comforter and closed my eyes.

  * * *

  When I woke up again, it was Thanksgiving. Mother was banging around in the kitchen, getting the turkey into the oven, and I could hear Mrs. Jenkins rustling in Catherine’s room.

  I let her have first dibs on the bathroom, since I wasn’t in dire straits yet, due to the bathroom visit in the wee hours. Once I’d heard her flush and shuffle back to her own room, I made my own way across the hall and into the shower.

  In all the excitement yesterday, we’d neglected to buy Mrs. Jenkins a nice outfit for Thanksgiving, so after squeezing myself into something—in just the two days I’d been here, I felt like my clothes were getting tighter—I padded into Catherine’s room and made a beeline for the closet.

  Of all my mother’s children, Catherine was always the rebel. At least until last year. Now, after Rafe, I guess I’ve taken over that mantle. But Catherine married a Yankee—a law student from Boston she met at Vanderbilt Law School—and when she was younger, she was less inclined to let Mother fuss with her clothes and hair the way I let her fuss with mine.

  In fact, I knew that in the back of Catherine’s closet, there still hung a couple of dresses Mother had bought for her when she was a teenager—three babies ago—that Catherine had left there when she went off to college.

  Fifteen years ago, my sister had been much more Mrs. Jenkins’s size than I’d ever been. At least not since I was about twelve, and I had no clothes left from that time.

  Mrs. J wasn’t in her room. She must have headed downstairs while I’d been in the bathroom. So I opened the closet doors and dug in.

  Yes, just as I remembered. A sweet, little dress of navy eyelet, with little cap sleeves and a scalloped hem. It was a summer dress, but Mrs. J had a cardigan she could wear over it. And it would look all right with the white Keds.

  I lifted it to my face. It smelled all right. Mother leaves lavender sachets here and there in drawers and closets, so there was a hint of that, but at least it didn’t smell old and dusty. And I was certain Catherine wouldn’t mind. She couldn’t have stated her opinion of the dress and Mother’s taste any more strongly than when she left it behind in the closet.

  I put it on the bed along with the cardigan I found crumpled on the floor, and headed downstairs.

  Mother and Mrs. Jenkins were in the kitchen. So was Pearl, who must have forgiven me for last night. She greeted me with a doggie grin and a couple of slaps of her stubby tail against the floor.

  “Hi, baby.” I bent and gave her a scratch between the ears. I had to brace myself with the other hand on the top of the island to do it, and it took effort to get myself straight again.

  Mother watched me, her expression vaguely worried. “How do you feel, dear?”

  “Fine,” I said, because that’s what you’re supposed to say. You’re not supposed to mention that your ankles hurt before ten in the morning, and that your lower back never stopped aching last night.

  “How much longer?”

  She didn’t have to ask until which event. There was only one event on my horizon at the moment. Christmas and New Year be damned; it was all about giving birth.

  “Two weeks and five days.” Not that I was counting. At this point I didn’t have to. I reminded myself every morning how much longer I had to wait. At home, I had a calendar where I marked off the days. If I could have, I’d have counted the hours and minutes, too.

  “I think the baby’s dropped,” Mother said.

  Dropped? Where?

  I almost looked around before I realized what she was talking about. “It isn’t time for that yet. That happens just before labor. I have more than two weeks to go.”

  “Sometimes the baby drops early,” Mother said. “And sometimes the baby’s born early, too.”

  Mine wouldn’t be. I wouldn’t be that lucky. I’d be going through every last interminable day and hour of my pregnancy. In fact, the baby would probably be born late.

  “Do you have a backache?”

  I did have a backache. And since she’d asked, it was all right for me to admit it.

  “The baby’s dropped,” Mother said. “From now on, you’ll be going to the bathroom every hour.”

  “I’m already going to the bathroom every hour.” Or very near.

  “And you’ll probably get Braxton-Hicks contractions.”

  I’d heard of those. I’d even had a few. They hadn’t lasted long, and hadn’t been all that uncomfortable.

  My mother chuckled. Evilly. “Just wait,” she said.

  We spent the morning fiddling with the food. The table was already set, and beautiful, so there was nothing to do there.

  Rafe called just before eleven. “Sorry, darlin’.”

  “Don’t tell me you aren’t going to make it!”

  “I’m gonna make it. I just had some stuff to do this morning. That’s why I haven’t left yet.”

  “Oh.” I might have overreacted just a touch, then. “What happened?”

  “We took another shot at Mary Carole Fesmire,” Rafe said. “She recanted.”

  Doctor Fesmire’s wife? “Recanted what?”

  “Now she says he did go out on Saturday night. Just after eleven.”

  “How far from his house in Franklin to the nursing home?”

  “Under thirty minutes,” Rafe said, “but not too much under. He lives on the south side of Franklin. And he might have stopped for gas or a cup of coffee or something.”

  Or a scalpel. Although, being a doctor, he probably owned one of those already.

  “So maybe it really was Fesmire who came through the front gate just before midnight.”

  “Maybe so. Tammy sent Spicer and Truman to knock on doors, just in case somebody’d been up and seen the car. On a Saturday night, people tend to stay up late. And come home late.”

  True. Someone might have seen Fesmire’s car go by in the direction of the nursing home between eleven-thirty and midnight. It was a fairly distinctive car.

  On the other hand, it had been raining pretty hard that night, so people might have stayed home. Although someone could have looked out the window and gotten lucky, I suppose. At any rate, Officers Spicer and Truman would find out. They’re not the types to give up until they do.

  “But you’re still coming?”

  “I’m throwing a change of underwear in a bag right now,” Rafe said. “I’ll head out in ten minutes. I’ll see you around noon.”

  Of course he would. I couldn’t have made it from Nashville to Sweetwater in the time that was left before noon, but I had no doubt he could.

  “Drive carefully.”

  “Always,” Rafe said, and hung up. I rolled my eyes and dropped the phone in my pocket. />
  It wasn’t until I’d done that, that I remembered I hadn’t told him about the events of last night, and how Mrs. Jenkins had been on her way out of the house. When he got here, we’d have to have a talk about it. Whether she’d done it on purpose or not, we couldn’t have her walking around in the middle of the night unsupervised. One of these nights she was liable to disappear completely. We’d either have to find another facility for her—because I wasn’t about to send her back to Fesmire’s place after what had happened—or we’d have to figure out a way to dope her up every evening so we could be assured she’d sleep through the night. Her nocturnal wanderings had gotten her in enough trouble.

  For a second, I thought about calling him back. But then I decided to just discuss it when he got here. If I didn’t call him back now, he’d be able to hit the road and get here sooner. And I’d rather see him than talk to him on the phone. And anyway, we had hours and hours to go until it was nighttime again. Plenty of time to figure things out.

  So I left the phone in my pocket and headed back downstairs to the kitchen. “Rafe will be here by noon.”

  “Wonderful,” Mother said warmly. She was rotating pies in and out of the oven. Pumpkin, of course, sweet potato, and apple. The smells were delicious.

  I looked around. “Where’s Mrs. Jenkins?”

  “In front of the TV,” Mother said. “Didn’t you see her when you came down?”

  I hadn’t. Now I went and checked, and yes indeed, she was there, just too short to show over the back of the sofa. On screen, some guy with tattoos all up and down his arms was reeling in a fish and talking about lures and bobbers and things I knew nothing about. I checked the channel logo on the bottom right on the screen. Looked like we’d moved on from HGTV to CMT, Country Music Television.

  Mrs. J was watching the fishing show just as intently as she’d watched the renovating. I perched on the loveseat next to her. “Have you ever gone fishing?”

  She nodded. “Yes, baby. It’s cheap food.”

  I guess it was. I hadn’t ever gone fishing myself—it had definitely been unsuitable for a Southern Belle—although Dix had. And I’m sure Rafe had fished whatever lived in the Duck River out when he was a boy.

  I wondered whether his grandfather had taught him to fish. Or maybe LaDonna knew how. Living next to the river, the way they’d done, she probably had. And as Mrs. Jenkins had said, it was cheap—or free—dinner.

  They say it’s relaxing, but I have to say, I’d much rather buy my fish cleaned and filleted at the store. Or even better, grilled and plated in a restaurant, with a little butter and a thin lemon slice on top. You can call me privileged if you want—I’m sure I am—but I had no desire to try to catch my own dinner. And was grateful that I didn’t have to.

  “The river ran right past the nursing home, right?” You could see it from the pavilion where Julia Poole had died. I’m sure it was a romantic view by moonlight. If not so much in the driving rain.

  Mrs. Jenkins nodded. “Yes, baby.”

  “But there’s a fence.” So the old folks wouldn’t accidentally wander off and fall in and drown.

  “Yes, baby.”

  “No fishing? Or boat trips?”

  “Miz Bristol’s family took her out on the river.”

  Had they? I guess the nephew—or maybe niece; let’s not be sexist—whose truck had had the fishing bumper sticker, also had a boat. It made sense. There aren’t that many places you can go fishing without one.

  And—when I thought back to the morning of the funeral, and the truck—it had had one of those round balls in the back, that you can attach things to.

  “That was nice of them.”

  Mrs. Jenkins shrugged scrawny shoulders inside the housecoat.

  “That reminds me,” I said. About the housecoat, not the boat. “I found you a dress to wear for dinner. It’s on the bed in your room. We didn’t get around to finding one yesterday, remember? It used to belong to my sister Catherine.” I described it. Mrs. Jenkins liked blue, so she perked right up when she heard that it was.

  “It might be a little big on you,” I warned, “but it’ll fit better than anything of mine. And you’ll look lovely. Would you like to come upstairs and see? And maybe change before Rafe gets here? He’s on his way.”

  Mrs. J nodded eagerly. She definitely wanted to change, and look pretty, before Rafe got here. She might not always remember who he is, but she adores him.

  So we headed upstairs, where I combed and pinned her hair, and helped her into the blue dress. As I’d expected, it was a bit too big. Not to put too fine a point on it, but it hung on her birdlike frame almost like on the hanger.

  I found a white belt and cinched the waist. That helped a little. And made me wish, not for the first time, that I still had a waist of my own. I’d get it back after the baby was born—a few months after the baby was born, probably—but it would never be what it was.

  And it hadn’t been anything that exceptional to begin with. Now that I’d realized I’d never see my old figure again, I wished I hadn’t been so critical of it when I’d had it.

  Since we were upstairs anyway, and since I also wanted to look nice for Rafe, I changed into my party dress, as well. It was black—Mother likes to point out how slimming it is, so I figured I’d come down on the side of caution—and nicely streamlined. There was no way to streamline the baby bump, of course. But from the back, I looked pretty darned good, if I do say so myself. And the multi-strand necklace I draped around my neck drew the eye up and away from the stomach, and emphasized my décolletage, which is the only part of my body that’s actually improved with pregnancy.

  Mother even nodded approvingly when we came back downstairs. “Very nice. And slimming.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  Mother turned to Mrs. Jenkins. And frowned. “That doesn’t look like one of Audrey’s.”

  It might have been. Fifteen years ago. “It’s Catherine’s,” I said. “She left it in the closet when she left for college. I thought it might fit Mrs. Jenkins.” And it wasn’t like Catherine was ever going to wear it again. She hadn’t liked it in the first place, and by now, she wouldn’t be able to pull it up over her hips.

  “I’m sure she won’t mind,” Mother said graciously. She smiled at Mrs. J. “You look very nice, Tondalia.”

  Mrs. Jenkins beamed back. “Thank you kindly.”

  “Rafe’s almost here,” I said, “or at least he should be, so we’re going to sit in the parlor and wait.”

  Mother nodded. “I’ll go upstairs and change, too. The others should start arriving soon, as well.”

  We went our separate ways. Mother upstairs to primp, and Mrs. J and I to the parlor and the TV.

  It can’t have been more than five minutes later than we heard the rumble of the Harley-Davidson outside. I left Mrs. J to the Property Brothers, and went outside to meet my husband.

  We haven’t spent a lot of nights apart in the time we’ve been married. And we haven’t been married long enough yet that anything about being together is old hat. I don’t know that it’ll ever be. Every time I see him unexpectedly, my heart still skips a beat, and even when I know what to expect, like now, I can’t keep from smiling.

  He pulled the helmet off his head and smiled back. “Afternoon, darlin’.”

  “Same to you,” I said, a little breathlessly. He has that effect on me, even fully clothed and in the middle of the day. “Any problems?”

  “Did I take too long?” He kicked the stand down on the bike, and got off, and hung the helmet on one of the handlebars.

  I shook my head. “You’re here exactly when you said you’d be here. I’m just happy to see you.”

  “I’m happy to see you too, darlin’.” He took the wide steps up to where I was standing two at a time, and bent his head to kiss me. He smelled of wind and leather—from the black jacket he was wearing—and his own spicy scent, and I drank it in while I wrapped my arms around his waist and held on.

  When he li
fted his head again, his eyes were dancing. “Your mama’s watching.”

  “Let her watch,” I said, but I did remove my arms. He kept his hand on my back until he knew my knees were steady enough to support me, and for good measure, he put the other hand on my stomach.

  “Everything OK here?”

  “As far as I can tell. My mother says the baby’s dropped. My back is killing me.” And the warmth of his hand right there felt good.

  He was more interested in the stomach, however, and I guess I couldn’t blame him. He took a step back to look at it. “I guess it looks like it’s maybe a little lower.”

  “If Mother says so, I’m sure it is. She says it means I’ll start having Braxton-Hicks contractions.” In fact, I was having one right then. My stomach tightened for a few seconds before relaxing again. The baby responded by kicking me in the ribs. At least it was facing the right way. I guess that was one thing to be grateful for.

  Although with more than two weeks to go, it might have turned right side up anyway, by the time it was ready to come out.

  Rafe helped me inside, and then turned to greet my mother and his grandmother. Mother presented a smooth cheek for a kiss. “Rafael. It’s good to see you.”

  “You, too, Margaret Anne,” my husband said politely, and buzzed her cheek before turning to give his grandmother a hug. She beamed as brightly as my mother.

  They dragged him back into the parlor for a chat. I sat by as Mother asked him questions about work—as if he went to and from an office every day—while Mrs. Jenkins just watched and smiled. Then the doorbell rang again, and I told Rafe to stay where he was while I went to let my sister in. She was carrying a big basket of fresh-baked rolls, and they smelled so good that I snagged one on our way to the dining room, where she left them on the table.

  “I have news,” I told her, once my mouth was empty.

  “What about?” She was looking around the dining room.

  “First of all, Mrs. Jenkins is wearing your blue eyelet dress with the cap sleeves, that you left in your closet when you went to college fifteen years ago.”