Chapter Nineteen
Packing up decades of memories made in the cabin got tougher rather than easier the higher Bailey Rae stacked boxes to take to the July Fourth farmers’ market.
But this would be her last load, for her last market.
Motown music played on the porch, a cassette unearthed, along with memories of Russell spinning Winnie around the kitchen.
Tomorrow, she would sell the remainder of her wares.
Everything else remaining inside the cabin would go to charity—a few well-loved pieces of furniture, the curtains Winnie had sewn, and for good measure, a cookbook left on the counter.
After a final scrubbing of the place, she would be on the road.
Skeeter cast a woeful look her way, sprawled on top of his dog bed. He sure knew how to work the soulful hound dog eye while hiding the icy-blue other one.
June knelt to place a bowl of water beside him before sitting on a sealed box of soy soaps and candles.
She fanned herself with an old magazine.
“Take a breather, girl, until Keith gets back from the dump with the truck so we can load up for tomorrow. Is there a bee in your bonnet sending you into such a frenzy?”
Bailey Rae traced a finger along the growth marks notched into the doorframe, a safer subject than the reason for the unsettled feeling that had plagued her since her lunch with Martin.
“I wish I could have a do-over on so many of those years that I gave Winnie grief. I wasn’t the easiest child to love. ”
How tough it must have been for Winnie to raise a surly teen while protecting her from the harsh realities of the lives she’d touched.
June’s fan kept a steady pace to make up for the air conditioner wall unit on its last legs.
“I think you were spunky, which was charming. But I understand your point. My early years in Bent Oak were much like yours. I was angry at life and my parents. Winnie was a seasoned veteran when it came to ‘spunky’ by the time you came around.”
Bailey Rae sat on the wood floor, the braided rug already rolled up against the wall for charity. “I always assumed you were an orphan.”
“A more appropriate statement would be that my parents were dead to me.” June forked a hand through her hair. “My folks were heavily into drugs and the whole ‘free love’ scene. Large parties. Guests passed out all over our apartment. Occasionally, one would wander into my room ...”
Bailey Rae gasped. “I’m so sorry.”
She’d suffered her fair share of abuse from Yvonne and her boyfriends, but never that.
Skeeter nudged June’s knee, and her hand drifted to rest on his spine. “At times different relatives would take me in for a while. I tested boundaries often. Sometimes for fun and sometimes to see if the love and protection being provided was conditional.”
“Did you go into foster care?” Bailey Rae asked. “Sorry if I’m being too nosy.”
“Not at all, kiddo,” June answered with a bittersweet smile.
“After my parents landed in prison, I was shuttled back and forth from a group home to relatives who pimped me out to pay their rent. The cycle continued until a teacher took notice. I had an early miscarriage in the tenth grade, just before a history final exam.”
Her jaw jutted on the last part, her hand stroking Skeeter faster and faster. Bailey Rae wanted to reach out and hug her hard but understood how sometimes comfort kicked holes in walls that needed to be dismantled one brick at a time. She hugged her own knees instead and stayed silent, listening.
“I told my teacher everything after she found me having a panic attack in the girls’ bathroom.
She reached out to a pastor in town with connections to the network.
” June motioned at the cabin. “I ended up in Bent Oak. Winnie and Thea helped tutor me until I was ready to take the GED. I got into college ... and here I am.”
Her GED? And now she taught college? “You sure did turn your life into a tribute to that teacher who saved you.”
June angled forward, closer. “It wasn’t always easy or smooth. I can’t count how many times I’ve wanted to let you know I understand the anger inside you. Winnie and I discussed it but ultimately decided we couldn’t risk telling you.”
“I wouldn’t have said a word.” She would have appreciated knowing she had something in common with June. But would she have let something slip in a childish mistake?
“I trust you, but this is a heavy secret to keep, and you already carried so much.” June’s gaze shifted to the growth chart etched in the doorframe. “Winnie wanted you to grow up free to move forward rather than be stuck in the past.”
“But you all have had to tote those same burdens ...”
“We didn’t have a choice,” June explained gently, her teacher voice coming through in her tone. “You do.”
2006
Mama had told me that marriage was work. And I believed her. But I hadn’t realized that while marriage was work, it shouldn’t be a chore. Loving Russell taught me the difference.
There were days I grieved that I couldn’t give him a child. Even if I’d been able to carry one to term, even if I hadn’t needed a hysterectomy, the lies in my past would have stopped me. Thea felt differently, and I respected that. I’d celebrated the birth of her son and daughter with Howard.
Russell and I found our own way to build a family, though, first by helping Libby with Keith.
Then by bringing June into our home. Tutoring her through her GED and first year of college had been an ironic joy as I finally put to use all that high-priced classical education.
Russell suggested I might be coming to peace with a blended identity of Eloise and Winnie.
And I thought he could be right.
We trusted each other’s insights that way. So when he telephoned that summer day asking me to drop everything and come up to the gas station, I hadn’t hesitated. I moved the pot of preserves off the burner, grabbed a sun hat from the hook by the door, and drove my truck right over.
Russell waited in front of the garage, both bay doors open and full with a pickup in one bay and a rusted-out station wagon on a lift in the other.
He raised a broad hand, motioning for me to pull over on the side of the building with the bathrooms. Seeing him, I winged yet another prayer of thanksgiving that Russell had survived the fire.
The nerve damage in his right arm had been worse than expected.
He’d shifted from driving long hauls to managing the gas station and supervising the mechanics.
If he regretted the loss of a NASCAR career, he never showed it. He’d stayed true to his word about turning his full attention to growing his grandmother’s network with the help of me and my friends.
We’d found a safe home for a dementia patient who’d been abused by her adult son in a hurry to obtain his inheritance.
There’d even been a housewife who’d gone “missing,” her cult-leader husband pleading on the news for her safe return.
Except she’d been locked in the cellar with no heat for weeks for any behavior he deemed unacceptable.
We’d made a difference for people, and I finally felt like I was living with purpose.
I parked by the air pump and dumpster, but before I could turn off the engine, Russell slid into the passenger seat and pointed the air conditioner vent toward his forehead.
I tried not to worry about the exhaustion on his face and how heavily he perspired.
The damage to his lung was more apparent in the brutal Carolina summer.
He swiped a bandanna over his face, then the top of his head, his hair buzzed shorter these days as his hairline receded. “Thanks for coming over so fast.”
“What’s the scoop?”
“Well, this young mother—Yvonne—isn’t looking for a new identity.
She said she just needs her station wagon repaired and a tank of gas, then she’ll be on her way to some place she heard is looking for waitresses.
” He nodded toward the gas station “lounge,” where a woman puffed away on a cigarette in spite of the No Smoking signs I’d placed all around to help protect Russell’s respiratory system.
“I should fix her busted radiator, give her the gas and a twenty, then send her on her way. But it looks like she’s living out of her station wagon, and she’s got this kid . ..”
He rubbed along his collarbone absently, his eyes tracking toward the dock behind the garage. A scrap of a kid sat on the edge, dangling her feet in the water. Now I understood why Russell had stayed outside. Not because of the smoke, but because the mother let her child run around unsupervised.
Russell shifted his attention back to me.
“I didn’t want to make a decision without running it by you.
But I’m not sure how we can walk away. That kid was huddled under a blanket in the back seat of the station wagon with no working air conditioner, trying to make herself as small as possible. Those wide green eyes got to me.”
I didn’t hesitate.
“That’s all I need to know. How about I go talk to her so she doesn’t run off—or fall in—and could you give Thea a heads-up to start checking records to make sure that woman is really the child’s mother?
” The internet had been a godsend when it came to verifying backgrounds, although with each year that passed, it made staying off the radar all the tougher.
“Then Thea can find a job for her at the mill.”
We wouldn’t be able to count on the factory for a steady stream of jobs much longer. Paper mills had shrunk by over 50 percent in the past couple of decades, which left a substantial part of the Bent Oak population out of the workforce, reinventing themselves at only ten years shy of retirement.
But the fate of dying small-town America was a problem for another day.
Russell tunneled his hand under my hair and cupped the back of my neck. “Lord have mercy, I love you, woman.”