Chapter Twenty-Nine
Twenty-Nine
A Pearl of Wisdom
from Renny Russo
“I’ve been alive many years, and if there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s this. If there’s grief, there’s love, plain and simple.”
Tallulah
I wasn’t planning to go.
Earlier, I’d even warned Katy that there was a chance we’d once again miss the evening walk with Jake and Daisy, just like last night. She’d been disappointed but hadn’t pushed. It was clear to me she understood something was going on. She could see my sadness.
Yet at a little before six thirty, I found myself wandering into the dining room. I peeked out a window, toward Vera’s house, and saw Jake standing at the end of the driveway, Daisy at his feet.
He was looking this way.
Waiting.
For me, and Katy, and Mary Joy.
My heartstrings were being pulled, plucked, even while I was silently cursing myself for looking out the window in the first place.
If I hadn’t seen, I wouldn’t have known.
But now I knew.
“Katy,” I called out.
It was probably for the best just to get this over and done with. Get the awkwardness out of the way. I couldn’t keep avoiding him, though I wanted to.
My reaction to the news that Jake’s stay here in Forget-Me-Not was temporary hadn’t been his fault. He’d never led me on. He’d never been anything but friendly. Neighborly. Nice. Kind. Funny. Handsome.
Stop, I told myself. Just stop.
Within a few minutes, we were out the door. Katy shot ahead of me to say hi to Mr. Daniels, who was watering his shrubs. Big bold hydrangea blooms were sagging under the weight of the water, but I knew they’d perk right back up once they dried off.
I was heartened by the budding friendship growing between her and this kind man.
She’d needed to understand that sometimes people would do things she might not understand.
That perhaps there was a reason behind what some might deem madness.
He’d taught her that lesson, and she would definitely grow from it.
Yesterday she’d brought him her sapling, so he could continue to nurse it until it was ready to plant. He promised she could visit whenever she wanted, then showed her where he planned to plant his tree. She had approved of the plan, as though she had a say.
Now, as I considered it, maybe she did.
As Mary Joy and I made our way slowly down the sidewalk, I tried not to look ahead. I couldn’t help myself, though. Jake still waited for us, his pensive gaze unwavering.
Ordinarily, he’d smile, wave, or even start toward us.
These weren’t ordinary times, however.
These were uncharted waters.
Muddy, murky waters.
Mary Joy was in her fabric carrier instead of her stroller. I was grateful she was so close, giving me someone to hold on to.
The sky was streaked with orange and red, and Mary Joy’s strawberry blond hair looked like spun gold in the evening light. A mourning dove bopped around the street, splashing in the puddles that Mr. Daniels’s watering had created.
Once Katy rejoined us, she stopped to watch the bird, crouching low to get a good look.
“Mama, it looks like she’s wearing makeup!”
I crouched low, too, keeping a hand on Mary Joy’s back. The dove had a thin band of blue around her eyes that looked like eyeliner. “It does,” I said, smiling. “She’s beautiful.”
“Do you know mourning doves symbolize hope and peace?” she asked in her teaching voice.
She’d been dropping these little tidbits of information ever since opening Evanthe’s birthday gift: a book on bird folklore and symbolism and a stuffed owl that hooted when its belly was pressed.
“I didn’t,” I said, thinking I could use some hope and peace right about now.
When we stood up again, she took my hand. I saw the concern in her eyes when she looked up at me, and I smiled to reassure her that I was okay.
I was.
I was.
I mean, yes, I felt a bit ill when I looked at Jake, a debilitating mix of humiliation and heartache, but I was okay. I wasn’t sure why this felt so much like a breakup when we hadn’t even been dating.
Yet my heart hurt.
And when Daisy’s tail started wagging at the sight of Katy, it actually brought tears to my eyes.
Suddenly I knew this wasn’t going to go well.
I took some calming breaths and tried to arrange my features into a neutral look.
Katie skipped ahead to kneel down in front of Daisy to give her lots of love and said, “Hi, Mr. Jake!”
Jake handed her the leash, as had become custom, and said, “Hey, Katy.”
“Mama, can I go ahead?”
I nodded, and the pair ran off, toward the arch at the end of the street. The sound of her tennis shoes slapping the ground and the jingle of Daisy’s tags lingered behind.
Jake’s dark gaze swung to me. “Hi.”
“Hello,” I said, looking him in the eye, then quickly away.
He reached out and took hold of Mary Joy’s hand, giving it a wiggle. He smiled. “Hi there, cutie.”
She kicked her legs and made happy noises.
“Is that a new tooth I see?” he asked her.
It was. It had popped through this morning, and I was hoping it meant her teething pains would let up for a while. The drool rash, too. I just couldn’t seem to get rid of it for good—it kept coming back.
She grinned at him and I said, “We should catch up to Katy.”
As he stepped back, nodded, I tried not to notice the sadness in his eyes.
We walked side by side, a good arm’s length apart, and I tried not to think about how on our previous walks, we would stand so close that sometimes our arms would bump. Those days were over.
Mary Joy cooed along with the songs of the cicadas and crickets and frogs. As we passed under the arch and into the sun garden, Katy allowed Daisy to sniff every tree, post, and bench they came across. She had, I decided, more patience than I ever would.
As Jake and I followed the pair around the circle, he said, “I heard you signed papers on the house. Congratulations.”
“Thanks,” I said.
There. See? I could do this.
“When’s move-in day?”
“I close in two weeks. It being a cash sale expedited things.”
I assumed he had a mortgage for his new condo, which was why his closing was taking six weeks. Or maybe the sellers needed time to pack and move. Even though I was curious, I didn’t ask.
“I’m glad. I know you wanted to get in as soon as possible. Are you ready for the renovation?”
“As I’ll ever be. I have the feeling I’ll be scraping wallpaper for years.”
We walked in silence for a moment before he said, “I’m glad you came out tonight.”
I nodded, wishing I were home. “It’s a nice night.”
I kept telling myself to be friendlier, but I just couldn’t summon up that kind of fakery.
After a moment, he said, “I really thought you knew, Tallulah. I wasn’t trying to hide anything.”
Oh no. I didn’t want to get into this. I glanced at Katy and willed her to pick up the pace.
“I believe you,” I finally said, and threw him a bone. “I was just taken by surprise. Sorry.”
“Sorry for what? You didn’t do anything.”
For falling for you, I wanted to say, but instead said, “For overreacting. I’m actually embarrassed. I just thought—” I cut myself off, not wanting to say too much, reveal too much, though I supposed that cat was already out of the bag.
“What?”
I walked a little faster. “Nothing. It doesn’t matter.” I stuffed my feelings down, down, down.
“I think it does.”
Tears stung my eyes, but I blinked them away before he could see them. “Jake?”
“Yeah?”
“Can we talk about something else?”
He pulled in a deep breath. “Okay. What do you want to talk about?”
I looked up at the sky, pleading with the heavens. “The weather?”
“All right.”
For the rest of the walk, we chatted about different kinds of clouds and the tropical storm in the Atlantic, and how there were many different types of fog.
Well. He did most of the talking. I did a lot of mm-hmm-ing.
When we made it back to Vera’s, I tried to joke, saying, “You seem to know a lot about the weather. Are you a forecaster?”
But my voice fell flat. My heart just wasn’t in it.
He shook his head, looking as miserable as I felt.
I didn’t think I could take another minute of this.
I looked over at Katy. Daisy had towed her to a fire hydrant across the street, where she was having the time of her life sniffing all the smells. “Katy, you can stay for a few minutes more, but I’m going to head home and get Mary Joy’s bath ready, okay?”
She patted Daisy’s back. “How many minutes?”
I hated to hurry her along. “Ten.”
She smiled, and I turned to meet Jake’s gaze. I wasn’t sure what to say.
He shifted foot to foot. “Will I see you tomorrow night?”
I glanced at the skies again, praying. “Probably not.”
I’d ask Papaw to bring Katy down to visit Daisy. I didn’t want to take that away from her, since Daisy would be leaving soon.
Jake jammed his hands into his pocket. “I understand.”
I took a deep breath, and it felt like my heart was cracking open. “Bye, Jake.”
“Goodbye, Tallulah.”
Despite how hard I was trying to keep them at bay, tears filled my eyes as I walked away.
I’d made it only a few feet when I heard him say, “If it means anything, you make me want to stay.”
My knees had gone weak, but somehow I found the strength to turn around. I could barely see through the tears in my eyes. “Are you still leaving?”
It took a moment, but he nodded. “I just bought a condo … My friends and most of my family are in Florida.”
I started walking backward, away from him, away from the hopes I’d had. “Then it doesn’t mean anything at all.”