by Sharon Sala
“I promised Bowie I’d make a peach cobbler for tonight,” Rowan said.
Pearl smiled. “That’s a fine idea. Ella can peel the peaches, I’ll cut them up, and you start on the crust.”
Rowan threw the blanket aside and jumped up. “A pie party. We’re going to have a pie party!”
Even as they set to work, laughing and talking about cooking disasters from the past, when the conversation lulled Pearl got pensive, and the look in Rowan’s eyes still mirrored her sadness.
* * *
Bowie was tired to the bone when they called a halt to the day. He had a whole other list of supplies to order, not the least of which were two different structural headers needed to open up the space like his grandma wanted. As soon as they got those in place, they could start rewiring the house and putting in all the new plumbing they’d need for that second bathroom.
When they locked up for the night, the men headed to the bed-and-breakfast to clean up, and Bowie went home.
He thought about that journal all the way to the trailer park, wondering if it was just teenage-girl stuff or if his mother had revealed something Ella and Gran hadn’t known. Either way, it would have been tough for them to see the posts in Billie’s own handwriting, all of them unaware of how brief her life was going to turn out to be.
As he drove through the neighborhood, he saw kids on bikes and a woman on her knees, weeding a flower bed along the front of her house. A teenage boy on the opposite side of the street was washing a car. Blessings looked like any place in small-town America, but there were always secrets to be kept, no matter where people lived.
Finally, he entered the trailer park, saw a little redheaded girl on a bike, and then saw Yancy Scott out there beside her. Like father, like daughter.
As always, he set the car alarm as he headed to the door. This time, he let himself in. The only person in sight was Rowan. She was setting places at the table, pattering around it in her bare feet and as unconcerned with her state of being as he’d seen her.
“Welcome home,” she said.
Bowie made himself focus on her smile instead of her long legs and bare feet. “It’s nice to have someone to come home to,” he said. “When all this is over, I’m going to miss it.”
Rowan paused. “If this is too personal, then just tell me to mind my own business…but I have to ask… Why in heaven’s name do you live alone?”
He shrugged. “I don’t stay in one place long enough to connect with anyone like that. And the locations I’m on for months at a time are nearly always isolated.”
Rowan nodded and went back to placing cutlery at the place settings.
“What about you?” Bowie asked. “You are a beautiful woman.”
She stopped, then laughed. “That is pure flattery. We both know that’s not the truth.”
Bowie blinked. “Who told you that?”
“Daddy. He was just being honest. He always told me I was as sweet as could be, and that it was okay being a little homely. He didn’t want me disappointed by having no boyfriends.”
Bowie was in shock. “Your daddy…told you that?”
She nodded.
“And you didn’t have any boys ever wanting to take you out on a date?”
“Oh…a couple of boys called, I think, but then they never called back,” she said.
“Then they were blind as bats,” he muttered. “I’m going to shower off this dirt. I won’t be long.”
“There’s time,” she said. “We’re having meatloaf, and it needs another fifteen minutes or so to be ready.”
“I love meatloaf,” he said, and pulled his work shirt over his head as he headed for the shower.
Comfortably unobserved, Rowan looked her fill at the muscles rippling across his back. It wasn’t until he shut the bathroom door that she came back to her senses enough to go finish supper.
Chapter 8
Completely unaware of Rowan’s interest, or the girls secreted in the bedroom trying to decide what to do about him and his mother’s journal, Bowie went through the ritual of shampooing his hair, which reminded him of how badly he needed that haircut, then scrubbing himself clean.
He put on the pair of sweats again, with a clean T-shirt, then carried the dirty clothes to the washer and started the load, just like the night before.
Pearl was already sitting at the dining table, watching Rowan and Ella. When Bowie emerged, he winked at her and grinned.
And in that moment, realization dawned. She no longer saw Judson Boone when she looked at Bowie. She saw him for the man he was.
He came to the table, kissed the top of her head, and then helped Ella fill glasses with iced tea. That’s when he saw the peach cobbler sitting on the wet bar to cool.
“You guys made peach cobbler! It’s my favorite dessert! Good thing I saw it before I sat down to eat. I’ll be wanting to save room for that.”
“Rowan made it,” Ella said. “I only peeled the peaches for her. She made the crust and the filling. She sure knows her way around a kitchen.”
Rowan’s cheeks turned pink from the praise, which only reminded Bowie of her believing she was homely. He suspected her father had been responsible for chasing the young men away. If this was true, it was a selfish thing to do, and likely so he wouldn’t have to spend his aging years alone.
Once everyone was seated, Pearl said a blessing, and then they began passing food around the table and playing catch-up on their days. Bowie filled his gran in on their progress at her house, while Rowan listened as she ate.
“As soon as I get the men started in the morning, I’m coming back and we’re going to get you some phones to replace the ones you lost,” Bowie said.
Rowan immediately looked up. “Oh, I don’t need—”
“You’re getting one, too,” Bowie said. “You probably have family somewhere trying to get in touch with you, making sure you’re okay after all that happened.”
“No, there’s no one,” Rowan said. “Daddy was an only child. His immediate family is deceased, and my mother was on her own when they met. I’m about as rootless as I could possibly be.”
“Not anymore,” Ella said. “Mama and I have already decided, so it’s settled. You belong with us.”
Rowan’s dark eyes widened. She tried to smile, but tears were welling.
“That’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” she said, then glanced at Bowie. “That almost makes us kin.”
Bowie’s eyes narrowed. “I can’t be kin to you.”
Pearl frowned. “Why not?”
“What if I wanted to take you on a date sometime? How the hell would that look…dating family?”
Rowan’s lips parted, but for the life of her, she couldn’t find the words to respond.
Pearl grinned.
“Oh lord,” Ella said, and burst out laughing.
“Would someone please pass me the corn?” Bowie asked.
Rowan picked up the bowl and handed it to him.
“Thank you,” he said, and served himself a second helping. “I don’t know what you did to this can of corn, but it sure tastes better than when I heat one up.”
“Add a bit of sugar, no salt, and a little pat of butter,” Rowan said. “Takes away that canned taste and makes it taste more like fresh corn.”
Bowie gave her a thumbs-up. “Sugar. I’m going to remember that.”
A few minutes later, Rowan got up to get the cobbler, so Bowie went to get bowls out of the cabinet and then got ice cream from the freezer.
“You scoop cobbler, and I’ll do the ‘à la mode,’” Bowie said, then looked at the girls. “Ice cream, or straight cobbler?”
“Ice cream for both of us,” Pearl said. “But just one scoop on mine or I’ll be miserable.”
Rowan had all the bowls filled with cobbler, except for Bowie’s serving. She
dipped one big spoonful and then the second, then glanced up at him. “Hey, you, is this enough?”
“Maybe one more,” Bowie said. “One more big scoop.”
Rowan grinned. “They’re all big scoops. Now is this enough?”
Bowie eyed the bowl and then her. “Sometimes you can’t get enough of a good thing to ever satisfy you.”
Rowan’s heart skipped a beat. “Is it enough pie?”
“Oh! Right… Yes, that’s plenty.” He added a couple of scoops of ice cream, then put the carton back in the freezer while Rowan carried the bowls to the table.
He was still grinning when he sat down.
Rowan ignored him. She wasn’t wise enough in the ways of men to know what to do with Bowie James and wasn’t daring enough to think about what he might do with her.
Bowie lifted a spoonful of cobbler. “A toast to the pie maker tonight!”
The girls lifted spoons as well.
Rowan played along and nodded. “Thank you. Thank you. I owe it all to my amazing sous chefs, Pearl and Ella.”
They finished dessert and were getting ready to clean up when Pearl left the table.
“Bowie, could you come here a moment, honey?”
He looked up. She was standing at the door to his bedroom.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “What do you need?”
Gran pointed to the pink journal lying on the bed.
“It’s yours to read, if you want.”
Bowie felt a little tug of panic. “You’ve already read it?”
“Ella and I read it together,” she said. “I didn’t know whether we should let you read it or not, but Rowan said you were a very strong man, and whatever was in it was always going to be your truth, whether you knew it or not.”
“She did, huh?” Bowie said, and looked back toward the kitchen, watching her measured movements and quick smiles.
Gran nodded. “Yes, but it is, of course, totally your call.”
He walked into his bedroom and closed the door.
Pearl sighed. For better or for worse, the journal was a revelation.
* * *
Bowie crawled up on the bed, made a backrest of the pillows, and then picked up the journal, thinking of what his grandmother had just said. It sounded suspiciously like a warning.
Whatever is in this is always going to be my truth. So, I guess I’m about to find that out. A little nervous about what he might learn, he opened the book to the first page.
It began with a cover page for the new owner to fill out.
This book belongs to: Billie Jo James.
He ran his finger over the writing, and saw the date and counted backward. It was a Christmas gift from her mother, and she was nearly fifteen years old. He smiled to himself, wondering what kind of a girl she’d been before…
At first, the entries were just about girl stuff. Who had a boyfriend, and notes about going to an upcoming party, then a mention about the party afterward. Some of them even made him chuckle. She sounded like Gran. Kind of sassy, with a slap-you-in-the-face attitude about being honest.
There was a whole page on her fifteenth birthday, and then more of the same girl stuff for two months more. Then one entry about going to a slumber party, and that she was going to walk there because her sister, Ella, had just been released from the hospital after an appendectomy and Mama needed to stay close.
The whole rest of that page was blank, and the next entry was on a whole separate page and nearly three months later.
And it was gutting. Bowie read the words through a veil of tears.
I never made it to the slumber party. Randall Boone beat me up and raped me. I told my mama. I told the law. I told the judge in court. They did nothing to him. I am going to have a baby.
Bowie wasn’t stupid. He’d wondered all his life how his mother must have felt about him, and on three lines of the journal, he felt her horror and her fear.
His tears made him angry, and he used the hem of his T-shirt to wipe his eyes.
The next entry was a couple of weeks later.
I told my best friend, Haley. She won’t talk to me anymore. The principal at school told Mama I couldn’t come to school pregnant. They put me on homeschooling. I am in jail.
And then the entries continued…each more heart-wrenching than the last. And all of them full of disgust for what was growing inside her.
Bowie was long past tears and numb with shock. He empathized with every emotion she had and understood exactly why she had them. She hadn’t asked for any of this. Not the rape. Not the injustice afterward. And not the child.
The next one was a month later.
I just found out Randall’s father offered Mama five thousand dollars to take me to have an abortion. This happened almost two months ago. It made me mad, but of course Mama told him to leave and never set foot on her property again. It was the first time I let myself think that the baby wasn’t all about Randall. The baby was also part of me. It was the first time I thought of myself as the mother, and not the victim. It’s time for me to grow up.
There weren’t any more entries until months later, and it was a single sentence.
I have a baby boy named Bowie and he is beautiful.
Bowie read the sentence over and over, trying to come to grips with the poignancy of his arrival in her world. Then after that, the entries were intermittent, but all endearing. Entries about his growth, and what he was learning to do, and that the first word he said was Mama.
During the ensuing two years, there was also a mention of her getting her GED, the equivalent of a high school diploma, and talking about the available jobs in Blessings once he started school.
He turned a page, only to find an old Polaroid picture of him sitting on Santa’s lap in some store. In the picture he was screaming bloody murder. Below it, Billie had written We do not like Santa. He grinned.
He flipped through pages, quickly scanning the others, which were beginning to sound alike. As the only male in the house, he appeared to be running the show.
And then toward the last of the journal, they became dark again.
Jud Boone saw Bowie playing baseball and told me to take my bastard and leave town. I know why. The older my son becomes, the more he looks like them. I don’t know what to do. I can’t tell Mama or Ella. I already feel like a burden because I can’t make enough money to move us out on our own. They don’t begrudge us being here…but now, even our presence in Blessings is unwanted.
Bowie didn’t realize this had happened. She’d kept everything from him, thinking she was protecting him, when in fact it was his ignorance of the ongoing dispute that had left him open to attack. He knew the story of how he’d come to be, but he’d been raised among such loving people that it had never mattered. He hadn’t wanted anything to do with that family. In his mind, they didn’t exist.
Until they nearly killed him.
The last entry in the book was the night he and his mama ran away. Her rage for what they’d done to him was alive within the words, and the heartbreak for the solution she’d chosen was there as well.
Bowie was working in a booth at the Halloween Festival at school. I drove my car up to get him when it was over. The only people left at the gym were the high school kids who’d worked the booths and their sponsors. I went inside to let him know I was there, and we were walking out together when the Boone brothers grabbed us and dragged us into the shadows.
Jud was there, just watching. They cursed us. Randall slapped me, and then Bowie jumped all three men. They turned on him like the dogs they are. Despite me begging and screaming for them to stop, they kept beating him.
They didn’t stop until they saw a police car cruise by. Then they said they’d be back to finish the job and ran away.
Bowie was hurt so bad. Mama and Ella were horrified when we got home. They wanted
me to take him to the ER. Instead, I made them doctor him as best they could and ran to pack our bags. This is the last entry I’ll make in this book. It belongs to our world in Blessings, and I’ll never be back.
A part of me wishes I’d never been born, and the other part of me wishes the same of Bowie. God help the both of us. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but whatever comes, it will not be at the hands of the Boones.
May they rot in hell.
Bowie closed the journal and laid it aside.
Wished he’d never been born.
He rolled off the bed and left the room without comment.
Wished he’d never been born.
The girls were sitting at the table playing cards. Pearl looked up as the door opened. His face was devoid of emotion.
“Honey, are you okay?” she asked.
Bowie moved toward the front door without looking at any of them.
Ella saw his intent and called out. “Don’t go outside in the dark barefoot.”
He was out before any of them could stop him. The door swung shut on its own.
“His shoes! He needs shoes. Snakes abound at night,” Pearl cried.
Rowan was out of her chair and running. She slid into her own tennis shoes, then ran to get a pair of his tennis shoes from the closet in his master bedroom and was out the door in seconds.
“Take a flashlight!” Pearl called.
Ella stopped her. “Let her be, Mama. He’ll take help from her easier than he will from either of us.”
Pearl shook her head and started to cry. “I was afraid something like this would happen.”
Ella frowned. “He’s in shock right now, like we were. He’s stronger than this. And he knows stuff about their lives during the three years they were alone that we’ll never know.”
* * *
Bowie went straight to the picnic table and climbed up. He didn’t think about his bare feet until he was already out, and he wouldn’t go back because he wasn’t ready to talk.
Then he heard the door open and close behind him and sighed. Only it wasn’t Aunt Ella. It was Rowan. She stopped in front of where he was sitting and without saying a word put the shoes on his feet.