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“All right. I’ll see what she says in the morning. Did you hear anything else from her?” she asked, mostly talking to Matt. Sunday hadn’t come until after they’d gone to bed, and the same for Luke. Matt hadn’t eaten supper with them, but he talked to her some in his truck on the way here.
“Not really.” And that’s all he said. Funny that sometimes the boys could talk up a storm, and other times trying to pry information from them was like trying to pry orange juice from a feather.
Lana slept on it, like she liked to do, and prayed about it too. She just had a feeling about Jubilee. She wasn’t sure exactly what it was about her, but she just felt like she needed to help her. So, when she was standing in the kitchen the next morning, and Jubilee poked her head in the doorway, Lana decided that it was time to lay their cards on the table.
“Good morning,” she said with a smile, nodding at the fruit bowl on the counter. “There’s fruit, and if you’d like to make yourself some oatmeal or some eggs, you can help yourself to whatever.”
“Maybe I’ll wait until my kids get up.”
“There’s cereal in the pantry if that’s what they like.”
“I’m sure that’s probably what they prefer, but I might cook eggs if that’s okay. I’ll cook some for you?”
“I’m not usually too hungry first thing in the morning, but I was kind of hoping we could talk if you have a minute?” Lana asked, taking her banana and her coffee and nodding at the back patio.
“I’d love to. I actually laid awake last night thinking that I’d like to talk to you.”
“Well, that makes two of us.” Lana smiled as she used her elbow to unlatch the door and push it open.
Back years ago, when they farmed the ground as a family, she started working as soon as her feet hit the floor in the morning and didn’t stop until dark or after. There were very few slow, peaceful mornings and even fewer of those kinds of days.
“A lovely morning. It’s my favorite time,” she said as the rising sun cast a glow over the lake.
Their house faced the street so they could see the lake from the ends of both the front and back porches. Sometimes she wondered why the house was set up like that; after all, a beautiful view of the lake from the front porch would be ideal. But she had to admit that she liked the fact that she could see it from either porch. Maybe that was the better way to build it.
“So you didn’t sleep very well?” she asked as Jubilee got settled in a chair.
“No. I guess I didn’t. But it wasn’t that there was anything wrong with the room. I loved it. Beautifully decorated, and the bed was so comfortable.”
“Thanks. Clara helped me decorate the house. She loves that kind of thing. She’s always wanted to open up her own artist shop by the beach, but she fears that it would be a failure, and I think she’s afraid to just step out and try. You know?”
“Well, failing isn’t fun,” Jubilee said reasonably. “I guess I don’t blame her.” She sighed. “I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t failed in my marriage.”
“That leaves a person with a really bad sense of not being able to do anything right, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Jubilee said, her posture slumped, but her eyes brightening just a tad like she hadn’t considered that Lana might have experience in that too.
Lana didn’t usually share her story. But before she thought about it, her mouth opened. “We used to farm this. We had five hundred acres. The boys did hay with their dad. The girls and I helped. We had a big vegetable operation as well and twenty acres devoted to blueberries. But winters are long and dark and hard, and there’s a lot of women dressed in a lot of nothing on the beach in the summer that look pretty tempting to a man with no morals. My husband...cheated a lot before he finally left.”
“That’s sad.”
“Yeah. It was devastating. I suspected for years that he might not be completely true. You know, overhearing the odd conversation, seeing a text on his phone, where he said he was going didn’t quite line up with where I heard he was. Those kinds of things. But you can’t really follow after your husband, demanding that he explain every single thing that he’s ever done, because then you look like an overbearing, nagging, and paranoid wife, don’t you?”
“You do. Even if you’re justified in your fears. Although, even if you’re not justified in your fears, it shouldn’t hurt to ask. Right? If there’s nothing going on, then your husband shouldn’t have a problem answering a simple question of ‘you said you were going to be here, why did I hear that you were there?’”
Lana nodded, seeing that Jubilee understood exactly what she was saying.
“Anyway, that was tough. And we sold a little bit of land, just to try to make ends meet and to pay off the rest of the farm. I wish I wouldn’t have had to do that now, because with six kids, I could have used that. But that’s just what I had to do.”
“Then you do really understand the idea of starting over.”
“I do.”
“Do you know of any places in town that are hiring? I mean, I know that Blueberry Beach is a lot bigger, and I could find a job there, but I know that housing would be more expensive there as well.”
“There isn’t a whole lot of housing here, but I talked to Matt and one of his brothers, Luke. Sunday, one of my three daughters, was here as well last night. I don’t exactly need my kids’ permission to do anything, but I had this idea, and it involves you.”
“Okay,” Jubilee said, pushing one strand of brown hair that had been loosened by the wind back behind her ear.
