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B.J. finished his senior year of high school, but skipped the ceremony, unable to face the shame.
Shirley was let go from her job as a receptionist in a dental office and removed from being a volunteer storyteller at a local library. She finally found a job as a dishwasher in a small Mexican restaurant, and was grateful for it.
Then one day, about a year after Clyde’s imprisonment, Shirley got a phone call that changed their world.
It was the first week of February and Shirley’s day off. She was doing laundry when her phone rang. She recognized the area code, and without looking at the number, just assumed it was her mother, Helen, calling from Kentucky.
“Hello.”
“Hi, Shirley. This is your Aunt Annie.”
Shirley was a little surprised, but pleased to hear from Annie. She was one of her deceased father’s sisters, and she adored her.
“Hi, Auntie! It’s good to hear your voice.”
“Well, sugar, I’m not calling with good news,” Annie said. “I’m so sorry to have to tell you, but your mother passed away in her sleep last night.”
Shock rolled through Shirley in waves.
“No! Oh my God, no! I just spoke to her day before yesterday. She was in good spirits and said she was feeling fine.” She started crying. “Mom was my touchstone to sanity.”
“I know. I’m so sorry, Shirley,” Annie said.
Shirley was sobbing now, struggling to catch her breath. “Why didn’t Mom let me know she was failing?”
“She wasn’t. Not in the way you mean. Helen never looked at life like that. She just got old, and she was ready to go,” Annie said.
Shirley moaned. “But I could have been there to help.”
Annie hesitated before answering. “Honestly, I think Helen knew you already had more on your plate than you could say grace over. This was how she wanted it, and you have to honor that.”
“I feel like someone just cut the rope to my anchor,” Shirley said, then wiped her eyes and blew her nose. “So, what do I need to know? What do I need to do? I can’t be there before tomorrow at the earliest.”
“No, no. No need to hurry here at all,” Annie said. “Helen always said she didn’t want to waste money on some big funeral, and she didn’t want people looking at her in a coffin. She wrote it all down years ago and showed me where her papers were kept. She will be cremated, and her ashes will be saved for you. She always said when you come home to claim your heritage, she wants you to sprinkle them where the mountain laurel grows. She said you’d know the place.”
Shirley hadn’t thought past the shock of the loss until she heard the words,come home to claim your heritage.Her brother and only sibling had died in a car accident some years back, and knowing she was the sole heir to the land and the home in which she’d been raised, felt like one last hug from her mother.
“Yes. Yes, I know right where she means,” Shirley said. “Thank you for calling, Aunt Annie. I am so sad right now, but the thought of going home to Pope Mountain feels like a godsend.”
“I know,” Annie said. “We all know what’s been happening to you and your boys, and we’re so sorry for your suffering. Come home, darlin’. We love you. You’ll be safe here. This is where you’ll heal.”
“Yes, yes…I will. It will take a while, but I’ll let you know. Thank you for calling. I love you, too.”
After the call ended, Shirley sent a group text to her sons, calling a family meeting for that evening, and after the year they’d just lived through, the text sent them all into a panic.
Getting that message from his mom stopped Aaron cold. He didn’t even go back to his apartment after he got off work at the service station, and drove straight to her home, worried all over again as to what else might be happening.
His younger brothers had all moved home after the fallout to help pay the bills and look after Shirley, but the moment they got her messages, a feeling of dread came over them.
That evening they began arriving within moments of each other, leaving B.J., the youngest, to be the last toget home from his job at a fast-food drive-in. He parked his Harley in a skid, then came running into the house, wide-eyed and pale.
“Mom! What’s wrong?”
“Sit down with your brothers,” she said, then drew a slow, shaky breath.
“Your grandma has died. Aunt Annie said they found her in her bed. She died in her sleep.”
“Oh, Mama!” they said in unison, and jumped up and ran to her, hugging her and commiserating with her, which brought on another round of weeping.
