Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
H emingway’s words hovered in Jenny’s mind during the one-hour drive to Sumpter County, the site of Wyatt’s debate with Mindy Bannerman. Maybe she was headed for trouble, but that didn’t stop her from wanting to support Wyatt.
The debate was on the grounds of the largest dairy farm in Sumpter County. About a hundred people had already gathered at the Lundberg Dairy Farm by the time she arrived. Most were milling around the grounds, but a few sat in the rows of plastic chairs set up in front of the debate platform. An outdoor lighting crew hung light diffusers, reflectors, and tripods with impressive microphones because the debate was going to be televised on a public access station, broadcast over the internet, and picked up on two ag radio stations.
Everything was far more elaborate than she’d anticipated, and she scanned the venue in search of Wyatt. This place was huge! The dairy barn housed six hundred cows. There were outbuildings, feed pits, storage tanks, and an insulated milk silo as big as the ones at the OJ factory. The air smelled like sweet hay mingled with musty scents from the animals. Oversized fans built into the barn walls kept the air moving so it didn’t smell too bad, and she’d always liked the earthy smell of animals.
She rounded the calf pen and spotted Wyatt with a bunch of people clustered around him. He looked tanned, rugged, and fit. A crew member clipped a microphone to his white safari shirt. Wyatt’s sleeves were rolled up, exposing his tanned forearms, and it looked like he belonged out here. He looks perfect , and that fancy haircut he got in Orlando had been worth every dollar. A lady with a headset read last-minute instructions to him from a clipboard.
Oh, Wyatt . It was hard to contain the pride brimming inside as she strode forward, eager to wish him luck, but he raised his eyes and spotted her.
He frowned and gave a quick shake of his head.
She froze. His parents stood nearby, and Wyatt’s quick flash of warning said it all. If Jenny came any closer, she risked a confrontation with his mother and this evening was already stressful enough for him without that.
His reaction hurt worse than a slap, but she sent him a quick nod and retreated to blend in with the sound technicians before Donna could see her. This wasn’t the time to rock the boat.
She choked down a bitter laugh as she walked. It was stupid to let this hurt her feelings. Of all the tragedies she’d survived in the past two years, this didn’t come close to the top of the list. It was a snub, nothing more. Not like getting an orange grove plowed under. Not like having a brother blow his stack and kill two innocent women or witnessing her nephew become an orphan.
This was only a little snub.
From a man she adored, but oh well.
She picked her way across the lumpy yard to the other side of the dairy barn where Mindy Bannerman stood with her team. A couple of campaign consultants in business suits stood nearby and a makeup lady dabbed powder on Mindy’s face. It probably took half a can of hairspray to keep Mindy’s jaw-length bob so perfect in the humidity of the summer evening.
A campaign consultant whipped through a series of index cards, firing off questions, which Mindy answered like a rattling machine gun.
Price of beef? Check. Number of people employed by ag in Florida? Check. The three major challenges in accessing groundwater? Check, check, and check. Mindy had been doing her homework because she spouted the statistics with ease and gave a brilliant analysis of the problems of urban encroachment on farmland prices.
“All we really care about is the price of home rentals in Tallahassee,” Mindy’s husband joked to the campaign consultant, which elicited good-natured chuckles from her entire team.
Then someone from the news crew beckoned Mindy to the stage, where both candidates were needed for a sound check.
Jenny remained by the barn to watch. It was never quiet on a dairy farm. The cows inside the barn lowed and let out an occasional bellow. The drone of insects and chatter of evening birds were a constant in the background. The sounds would surely add a touch of rural ambiance for the radio and television crowd.
Mindy headed toward the stage. It looked like she tried to dress down with khaki slacks and a white safari shirt, but she hadn’t been able to resist the high-heeled ankle boots, which looked terrific until she tried to cross the muddy path. Her husband lent an arm as they navigated around the lumpy terrain.
How much did cute ankle boots like that cost? Jenny glanced down at her square-toed cowboy boots of scuffed leather with a one-inch stacked heel. She’d always liked them until she saw Mindy Bannerman’s classy ankle boots.
Two pairs of shoes approached, and she looked up, almost choking on her breath as she spotted Wyatt’s parents a few feet away.
“Oh, h-hi,” she stammered.
“Hello,” Donna said tightly. “Jenny, I think it would be best if you left. Wyatt doesn’t want you here tonight.”
She blinked. “Did he tell you that?”
“He didn’t need to,” Donna said. “We all saw his expression the moment he spotted you. This is the most important night of his life, and you are a needless distraction.”
That was blunt, but also probably true. If Wyatt had to choose between his mother or Jenny, so far he had an unbroken track record of siding with Donna.
She straightened her shoulders and managed a dignified nod. “I don’t want to cause any trouble. I’ll get out of your way.”
There was no thaw in Donna’s expression and Jenny didn’t wait for one as she headed toward the parking lot behind the barn.
She would eat nails before letting Wyatt’s mother scare her off tonight. A bunch of dairy workers had lined up along the back fence to watch the debate, and she would join them. Neither Wyatt nor his parents could see her back here behind the tables filled with telecommunication equipment. The sound check was still underway and she could hear everything. The television monitor on the table provided a closeup of the people on stage.
“Can I join you?” she asked a weathered dairyman, who scooted to the side so she could brace her forearms along the top rail of the fence.
The plastic chairs in front of the stage were soon filled. With the exception of the well-heeled campaign crew from Mindy Bannerman, most of the audience looked like farmers or ranchers from the surrounding counties. Up on stage, Wyatt and Mindy stood next to each other, chatting congenially during the last few minutes before the big show.
A debate moderator stepped up to welcome the crowd. Wyatt and Mindy moved to stand behind their respective podiums.
“Welcome to Lundberg Dairy Farm on this warm summer evening,” the debate moderator said, then proceeded to read the rules and introduce the candidates. Jenny stared at Wyatt, the strong column of his neck looking tanned against his white shirt. Over the past few weeks, she had snuggled against that neck, kissing it and laughing as she tossed debate questions his way.
Now she huddled at the back fence to hide from his mother.
It didn’t matter. The TV monitor on the camera crew’s table was only a few yards in front of her, and she had an even better view of him than those people on the hard plastic chairs up front.
She brightened as the announcer read Wyatt’s name and qualifications. Each candidate was greeted with polite applause from the audience; then the debate began.
Both sides were well prepared. Both sides spoke eloquently and with polish, but to Jenny’s mind, Wyatt seemed more appealing when he recounted his very first job bailing hay at fifteen, then helping out at his parents’ feed store from the time he was sixteen.
Rather than drawing on personal experience, Mindy’s opening statement was an elegant homage to the American farmer and the nobility of producing food for the world. She even reserved special praise for the Lundberg Dairy Farm and their commitment to grass-fed dairy cows.
“Yeah, but I saw her drinking almond milk before the debate,” the guy standing next to Jenny muttered, and another worker had some choice comments about the pricey bottle of vitamin-infused water her husband carried.
Once the debate moved into the main questions, both candidates performed well. If she was honest, Jenny would call it a draw, but Wyatt clearly had support from the dairy workers lined up along the fence. They supplied running commentary that kept Jenny’s mind distracted from the ache in her heart. Wyatt would be leaving central Florida regardless of if he won or lost. Why couldn’t she be enough for him? Hadn’t they been happy these past few weeks?
As expected, the debate soon veered away from agriculture to delve into tourism and other industries in the state. The future Commissioner of Agriculture would be a member of the governor’s cabinet, so all questions were fair game.
Then came a question that no one saw coming.
“Captain Rossiter,” the debate moderator said in an unusually somber tone, “gun violence is a concern for us all. Your own sister fell victim to the blast from a semi-automatic pistol during a domestic dispute. Would you care to speak to your position on gun control?”
It was a kick in the gut. Jenny held her breath as the camera zoomed in on Wyatt’s face. He looked thrown off balance. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he absorbed the impact of the question. She clenched the railing of the fence, anxious for Wyatt to get on with it.
“No,” he finally said. “My sister’s murder is the last thing I’ll ever want to discuss.”
He stepped back from the podium and gathered a breath. The dairymen beside her grumbled in sympathy and it seemed to take forever as Wyatt cleared his throat a few times. He glanced at his parents sitting in the front row, and that was a mistake.
Donna had buried her face in her hands. Wyatt came out from behind the podium, as if prepared to go to his mother’s side, but Wyatt’s dad gestured for him to continue the debate.
Wyatt returned to the podium but kept his head bowed, hands clutching the rim of the stand. Her heart thudded. Politically speaking, it was probably good to let people see some genuine emotion from Wyatt. This wretched pause could be forgiven, provided he could come up with a good, strong response to the question.
Sweat rolled down Jenny’s back and she fanned herself. Why hadn’t she anticipated a question like this and prepared him for it?
Wyatt finally lifted his head, his expression tight as he stared at the camera. Come on , she silently urged. He had been performing so brilliantly until now.
“I don’t have anything else to add,” Wyatt finally said.
There was another awkward pause until the moderator smoothed it over. “Representative Bannerman? Would you like to take a position on gun control?”
“Of course,” she said in a respectfully compassionate voice. “My sympathies are with the entire Rossiter family. Florida’s farmers and ranchers face unique challenges in rural areas where they sometimes encounter dangerous wildlife and have a right to defend themselves. This doesn’t preclude the need for sensible gun control throughout the state.”
Mindy kept speaking, but Jenny barely listened. Donna still hadn’t lifted her head and Wyatt’s expression was tragic as he helplessly watched his mother from the stage.
To make matters worse, Mindy knocked the gun control answer out of the park. She was poised, fair-minded, and pitch-perfect.
Closing comments were next, and Jenny prayed Wyatt could regain command of his arguments. The rules for the closing statements were simple: Each candidate was allotted three minutes to speak on whatever topic they wished.
Maybe Wyatt could somehow pull a rabbit out of a hat and salvage his disastrous non-answer on gun control, but his closing comments were a word-for-word recitation of the speech she’d practiced with him a dozen times.
The excruciating debate was over and Jenny slipped away before the moderator finished his closing remarks. The worst thing would be for Wyatt to see that she’d stayed and witnessed his poor performance.
She tortured herself on the drive home by listening to commentary on the ag radio station that broadcasted the debate. Both announcers agreed Wyatt fumbled the gun-control question but did well enough otherwise. Both men appeared surprised with Mindy Bannerman’s impressive command of the subject matter, although Jenny thought her answers mostly amounted to rattling off a bunch of statistics. Any high school kid could memorize stats.
She turned off the radio and drove in silence.
Why hadn’t Wyatt ever stood up to his mother on her behalf? When push came to shove, he always sided with Donna, and that would probably never change no matter how much she wished otherwise.
Wyatt drove his parents to their home while listening to a country music station. He had no interest in the commentary from ag radio, nor did he want to discuss his debate performance, or worse, his botched answer to the gun-control question.
But there was a topic burning in his mind, and after arriving home and watching his mother head upstairs for bed, he motioned his dad out to the backyard to discuss it.
This yard was a masterpiece, the envy of the neighborhood. It had an expansive deck with plenty of benches, two large picnic tables, and a fire pit. It had been the perfect place for his parents’ lively weekend picnics. The oversized grassy lawn had once been the site of neighborhood flag-football games and Cub Scout camping. His dad had been the scout master and his mother taught the kids how to roast corn in open pits and identify birds by their call. During his teenage years, this was the house where everyone came to hang out. Creating this magical home and garden was his mother’s greatest triumph.
Now the picnic tables were unused, the barrels that once brimmed with his mother’s potted herbs were empty, and the lawn overgrown.
“I wished you would have let Jenny sit with you during the debate.”
His father released a heavy sigh as he took a seat on a bench, staring out into the darkened yard. “Your mother couldn’t . . . Wyatt, she’s not ready yet.”
“Will she ever be ready?”
His dad shrugged, his face drawn with anguish. Neither one of them wanted this conversation, but it had to happen.
“Dad, I’ve got two women in my life who I love. Mom is one of them. What’s happening right now isn’t Jenny’s fault. Mom is the only one who can fix it.”
Ed stared at a couple of fireflies flickering in the darkened yard. The night air was warm and damp, its heavy mugginess weighing on them both.
“It’s not easy being caught in the middle,” Ed finally said. “As you get older, you’ll come up against all kinds of things that pull your loyalties in different directions. A boss who wants the time you’d rather spend with your family. Commitments to your kids warring with obligations to the church or your job, and there’s always a cost to choose one over the other. I know Donna isn’t rational right now, but I promised her for better or for worse. Lately it’s been a whole lot of worse, but I made a vow.”
Wyatt let it sink in, then asked the most painful question of all. “Are you saying that if I marry Jenny, you’ll always side with Mom?”
His dad’s eyes crinkled at the corners, and he looked grief-stricken all over again. “Don’t make me say it.”
Wyatt clapped a hand on Ed’s knee before rising. “Don’t worry, Dad. I get it.”
He understood his father’s message perfectly. If Wyatt chose Jenny, it was going to cost him both his parents.
Jenny stared at the pitched ceiling above her bed, unable to sleep. She should have asked Wyatt’s permission before showing up at the debate. It was a shame that she needed to, but maybe her appearance had thrown him off his game and caused him to flub that last question.
She rolled over and punched her pillow. What happened wasn’t her fault and she shouldn’t blame herself that Wyatt couldn’t stand up to his mother.
The ultimate irony was that Jenny desperately admired Wyatt’s parents. Anyone would want parents like Donna and Ed. They hosted backyard picnics for everyone in the neighborhood and their Christmas decorations lit up the entire street. Donna used to bake Wyatt a birthday cake in the shape of a football and his sister got a butterfly cake. Their Fourth of July celebrations featured backyard barbecues with sparklers and fireworks, not emergency drills and stories about the Bataan Death March.
Yes, Gus Summerlin really did use patriotic holidays to scare her and Jack with stuff like that. If her own mother had lived, things would have been different. Jenny would have learned how to bake charming cakes instead of learning to skin a deer.
A clattering noise sounded outside her window and she lifted her head, listening, because that didn’t sound like an animal.
Then something pinged on the actual window glass and she sprang off the mattress to peek outside. The silhouette of a man stood down below, flinging pebbles at her window.
It was too tall to be Hemingway, and those shoulders belonged to Wyatt. She lifted the window sash.
“Quit throwing things at my window!”
“You didn’t answer your phone,” Wyatt said.
That was because she’d put it on silent mode, but she wouldn’t have answered his call anyway. “What are you doing down there? How did you get onto the property?”
“I jumped the gate. You need better security out here, Jenny.”
Did he really come all this way to lecture her at two o’clock in the morning? “My security is fine. My taste in men is questionable.”
“I know, and I’m sorry.” Wyatt’s voice brimmed with regret. “I should have asked you to the debate. I was wrong. You’ve been a pillar of strength helping me study, and I blew it. Jenny, I’m sorry.”
“Are you drunk?” It sounded like it. Wyatt was normally so restrained and composed, not loud and agonized in the middle of the night.
“No! I’m just heartsick and mad and feel like I’ve lost the election because of that stupid gun-control question. You’re the only person I wanted to commiserate with, but I ended up with my parents because . . . Well, because they need me.”
And she didn’t . Jenny had been completely self-sufficient for years, but did that mean she had to take a back seat forever? Sometimes it got old being the pillar of strength.
“Quit pestering me at two o’clock in the morning,” she called down. “I’ve got a full day tomorrow and you’re interfering with my sleep.”
“What’s going on tomorrow?”
“Crenshaw,” she replied. “He’s coming out with that roll of pictures he found in my grandfather’s old camera.”
Talking about Crenshaw stirred her anger anew. She’d put her entire life on hold to help Wyatt with that debate. No progress had been made in figuring out how Svetlana got in the tree, and Wyatt was still down below being needy.
“Can you come down and let me in?” he hollered. “Come downstairs and let’s talk.”
“Forget it. It’s been a long day.” Frankly, she’d endured long days ever since her grove got plowed under, another sin to lay at Wyatt’s feet. Maybe it wasn’t fair to hold it against him, but she wasn’t in the mood for fair and lifted her arms to close the window.
“Wait!” Wyatt called out. “If you can’t let me in, then let me shout it out. Jenny, I love you. You’re the most important person in the world to me, and I haven’t been showing that to you. I love your optimism and tenacity and your great big, generous heart. Jenny . . . you’ve made me a better man. Even tonight, when I blew the debate and hurt my parents and disappointed a million voters, you’re the person I want to commiserate with because everything is brighter when I’m with you. In a few hours the sun is going to rise on another day, and you are going to saddle up and greet it in a good mood.”
“Is that a problem for you?”
“No! I love that you can do that. Come on, Jenny . . . let me in. I know you’re pissed at me and I deserve it. Let me hold you.”
As if that would solve anything. “You sided with your mother.”
“I did and I’m sorry.”
“Look behind you,” she said, pointing to the acres of land. “You sided with the state and tore down my grove.”
“I hate that law,” he said, a little of the warrior coming out in his voice. “It’s why I’m on fire to win this election. The first thing I would do is strike that eradication law from the books. It should have been scrapped years ago. Jenny, even when the worst happened, you didn’t let it beat you down. You keep springing back to the surface to face another day.”
She sagged against the window frame. “Lately all I do is lose my battles.”
He started laughing. Laughing! “Don’t you know that’s why I love you? It’s because you never give up. Even on the darkest night you figure out a way to spot the sunshine, and Jenny, that’s worth all the gold in Fort Knox. Come downstairs and let me hold you.”
It was tempting, but she didn’t have the energy to be his sunshine tonight. “I’m going back to bed. Crenshaw is coming tomorrow and I need to get some sleep.”
“What time? I want to be here.”
She was still mad at him but had never been good at holding a grudge. Nursing grudges only kept wounds from healing, and besides, she wanted him. From the moment she saw Wyatt sauntering across the parking lot at the OJ processing plant two years ago, she’d wanted him.
“Ten o’clock tomorrow morning, and don’t be late,” she shouted down, then slammed the window closed.
Her heart still thudded as she lay back on the pillow, but she couldn’t stop the smile from forming. Wyatt still loved her, and she could have him back if she wanted.