Chapter 36
THIRTY-SIX
“I have the highest respect for your nerves. They are my old friends.”
~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
M isty rain clung to children in backpacks and umbrellas walking down Main Street, heading to the first day of school. Perry’s downtown buzzed with people as businesses opened for the day. From their perch in a front booth of Cassie’s Corner Café, its floor to ceiling windows overlooking Main Street, Clayton and Elle had a front row seat to the waking up of downtown.
“Hopefully they beat the attendance bell.” Clayton’s head tilted at two teenaged boys racing down the street, a little girl skipping behind them with a pink umbrella. The slightly taller boy turned to scoop up the little girl, then rushed off with her on his back.
“They’re cutting it close,”Elle said, shaking her head.
“I was never late for school. You?” Clayton asked.“Never mind.”He laughed, taking in her “Have we met?” face.
“Do you want kids?”she blurted.
“I’m open to it with the right person, but it has to be a mutual decision,” he replied, stirring his coffee before taking a sip.“You?”
“I don’t know.”She peered at the tiny pockets of sun breaking through the gray sky like beacons of hope.“Although, I suppose not knowing is an answer.”
“I suppose.” Clayton’s face was thoughtful.
“You’re open to it?”she pressed.
He nodded, as her eyes flicked from the world outside to the world sitting across from her holding a black ink spot patterned white mug in his hand as he gazed back.
“You’d be a good dad,”Elle offered.
He reached for her hand, their fingers threading together. “You’d be a good mom, if you wanted it.”
The word mom souring in her ears. How could she be a good mom? She’d had a terrible example. Elle slipped her fingers free of his, grabbing her cup of tea with a small smile.
The exterior door opened, admitting a small breeze.
“Amanda!”A newcomer had entered the café to a loud greeting from the crew of retirees in the back.
Elle’s eyes locked on her mom’s familiar frame. The bright rainbow-striped sweater she wore was a colorful vortex, drawing all gazes to her in the café’s sea of black and white décor.
“Where’s Pastor Dan?” An older woman with bluish-gray hair asked, wrapping her arms around Elle’s mom.
“He’s on his way,” Amanda said warmly, her back turned to where Elle and Clayton sat.
The sight of her mom’s back was a fitting punch to Elle’s gut, a reminder of the importance, or rather Elle’s unimportance to her mom.
Turning to take a seat and finally facing the booths along the front windows, her mother’s blue eyes grew wide as she spotted Elle staring back. Their gazes stood in a fierce tug-of- war from across the room.Elle knew the tight “nothing’s wrong” smile painted on her mom’s face was reflected in her own.The chattering voices of her mom’s companions were muffled by the pounding of Elle’s heart.
“Baby, look at me.” Clayton squeezed her hand, drawing her attention back to him. “Tell me what you want.”
Elle looked into the pleading gray of Clayton’s eyes. What do I want? Such an easy question with so many complicated answers. She wanted so much.For her mother to walk across the room and say, “I’m sorry.” But sorry wouldn’t fix any of this.It never had in the past.How many empty apologies had spilled out of her mother’s lips after another disappointment?The stream of broken promises babbled through Elle like a brook of lies.
“Elle.”He slipped into the booth beside her and wrapped his arm around her. “I got you.”
She just nodded at him, knowing he had her.
“Aren’t you two adorable.” Cassie’s sarcastically sweet voice filtered into Elle’s ears as she placed their food on the table.“Anything else?”
“Cassie, I’m so sorry to do this.Could we get to-go boxes and the check?We forgot about an errand we need to run before work,”Clayton apologized.
“No problem.”She scooped the plates up.“I’ll go ahead and wrap this up for you. Give me five minutes and meet me at the counter.”
“I’m sorry.” Elle’s whisper was pained.
The apology was for Cassie for their abrupt departure, for Clayton for ruining their breakfast date, and for herself for not being strong.She made these promises to herself, but each time her mom appeared, her resolve crumbled.
I’m not a baby. She was a grown-ass woman who commanded respect at work.She was a dragon slayer who burned down the foes of her loved ones.She was a jungle cat pouncing on her man and demanding all her itches get scratched.She was all these things and also a scared lonely girl who wanted the love of the first person who’d held her, her mom. The person who was supposed to love her but didn’t.
Clayton stiffened and tightened his arm around her protectively.
“Hi.” Her mom’s voice was hesitant.
Clayton’s tall frame hid the face of the voice entering the safety of Elle’s corner of the little café, but she could picture her mom standing in front of their booth, her nervous hands picking at a cuticle.
“Eleanor…”
“I’m sorry. I don’t think this is the right place or time, Amanda.We were just leaving,”Clayton said, pulling Elle out of the booth to leave, his hands anchoring her to him.
“I’m sorry,” her mother croaked. “I’m really sorry.”
It’s what Elle wanted, an apology. For what, though? For interrupting their breakfast with her presence?For visiting Jamie’s grave, when she hadn’t attempted to reach out to her daughter in eighteen years?Who knew what she was apologizing for. Certainly not Elle.
“It’s too late,” Elle said, her face set in stern lines.
“Eleanor, it’s never too late for forgiveness,”her mother pleaded.
“What do you want forgiveness for?Be specific,”Elle demanded, a quiet fury in her voice.
Her mom’s mouth opened, closing quickly.An unspoken questioning glinted in her mom’s eyes.She said nothing, just stared at her daughter.
“If you don’t know or can’t say it, you can’t be forgiven.This is goodbye.We’re done.”
Her mom flinched as if Elle had smacked her. In many ways, her steely glare did just that.
“Clayton, I’d like to leave.”Elle’s tone was firm and final.
“Of course.”He pressed a tender kiss against her temple, the gesture reassuring and grounding.“Do you want to wait in the pickup while I pay or come with me?”
“Truck.”
“Okay.” He nodded. Then kissed her forehead again before digging his keys out of his pocket. “Here.”
The chicken wing keychain she’d bought him at the Anchor Bar on their first official date was an obnoxiously welcomed sight in this tense tableau of a final goodbye between a mother who’d stopped caring and the daughter who could no longer risk her heart waiting for an apology.
“I’ll be right there, baby.”Clayton stroked a gentle fingertip on her cheek, then kept himself between Elle and her mom as they walked toward the door.
“Eleanor…”
Elle stopped for a moment, just a moment, closing her eyes and reminding herself that she’s heard her mom’s song before and the tune always ended the same, with Elle’s heart broken.
“…I am so sorry.”
With a resigned shrug, Elle opened the door to leave.
“Please, stop.”Clayton addressed Amanda as Elle walked out the door.
“Who are you to her?”
Elle heard her mom weepily ask.
“I’m the man who?—”
The slam of the café door behind her interrupted the exchange between Clayton and her mom.
Unlocking the pickup, Elle crawled in, shutting the door behind her.Slipping onto the front seat of Clayton’s pickup felt like a hug, it wrapped around her almost like arms keeping her safe.Elle finally pointed that sword at herself, fighting back the feelings of loss and grief the encounter with her mother had evoked. She was done letting them impact her.
The driver’s side door creaked open, and Clayton climbed in.
His fingers combed through her hair, stroking as he said, “Talk to me.”
Elle sat up straighter.“She never says what she’s sorry for.I doubt she even knows. Her apologies were just to placate me. It was about her not wanting to be alone.I was just there, not because she loved me, but because she didn’t want to be alone.I was a filler.”
“You’re nobody’s filler.” Clayton’s jaw clenched.
“Well, I was.” Elle exhaled.
“I’m sorry, baby.”He pushed a stray strand of her auburn hair behind her ear. “You’re leaving work early today to meet Tobey, right?”
She nodded.
"I shouldn’t ask but take the rest of the day and come with me today.”
“To the farms?”
“Yes.”
“Moo.” It was a silly response, but it made him laugh.
“ Moo? ”
She smirked. “It’s cow for ‘yes.’ What kind of vet doesn’t speak cow?”