AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Do you know there are days and days I never think about her? Or him. Jasper and you boys have been my whole life. My whole heart. I’d never have found Jasper without my world ending. So in a way, Jennie’s violence upon Rex and herself set me free. Isn’t that awful? That I could think such a thing?”
What could I say? It was impossible to parcel out elements of one’s past and be thankful for some and not others. Everything worked together, good and bad. To wish for one thing to have happened and not the other made the outcome different. Without my father’s heinous behavior, Mama would never havehad room in her life for Jasper. Without him, I don’t know what would have happened to any of us.
Mama lifted her head. “How’s Annie?”
“She’s taking it hard. As expected.” I got up from the table to pour a glass of water from the tap. Before they moved in, Pop had remodeled the kitchen with new cabinets and appliances. For years after Pop moved into the big house with us, he’d rented the remodeled farmhouse out to various long-term tenants. By the time he and Mama were ready to move into a home without children, the place needed a makeover. Fortunately, because of Pop’s original gutting of the old farmhouse, the structure was sound. The work had been mostly cosmetic this time around, instead of tearing down walls and adding beams. A fusion of a farmhouse and modern aesthetic had turned out beautifully. Hardwood floors refinished. Walls painted. Curtains and shades updated.
Mama loved her new kitchen and the rest of the house he’d painstakingly refurbished for her, even though I’d been surprised by her willingness to leave the house she’d lived in her entire life. Apparently, she had been ready for her empty nest. Now she and Pop could live quietly and do whatever they wished. They’d earned it after raising all of us.
I’d have liked for her to enjoy these years without having to remember the worst days. Yet here we were. My father still tarnished us with his sins.
“That night, when he’d dragged himself all the way to the house, and I found him on the porch—he said he was sorry. That’s the last thing he ever said to me.”
“I remember,” I said softly. “Not that I cared. He didn’t deserve forgiveness.” An apology after such deception was impossible to reconcile.
“The apology was meaningless,” Mama said. “Whether or not he regretted his choices in the seconds before his death didn’t change the way he lived. The way he treated me and you boyswas not something I could forgive after only a whispered sorry on a deathbed. Anyway, it’s not up to me to forgive him. That’s God’s work. I couldn’t let him off so easy—let his last act just instantly wipe away all the ways he’d hurt us. He left. With her. He knew how much I loved Jennie. No one who does that can be forgiven. Not by me, anyway. But this? It’s different. She was sick.” She quieted, turning her wedding ring around and around on her finger. “If only she’d told me.”
“The doctors were pretty clear she didn’t have long to live. At least from what Rafferty saw in the file.”
“And now we’ll never know if it was because of her tumor or her true wishes. Either way, she did what she did, and it nearly ruined Annie’s life. If Mark hadn’t been so strong, she might not have made it. Especially after being ripped from her second family.”
I sat there, unsure of what to do now. Before I had time to decide, Pop came in from outside where he’d been shoveling the back walkway. The moment he saw us, he stopped midstride. “What is it?”
For the next few minutes, Mama explained what we’d learned. When she was done, Pop asked questions similar to Annie's and Mama’s. Why had she kept her illness a secret?
Because we had no answer, we just shook our heads. Sometimes in life the answers to our deepest questions remain unanswered. How we react to ambiguity and live within uncertainty is perhaps our hardest task as humans. Do we continue on even when we don’t have the answers to the most heart-wrenching of mysteries? We have to. Otherwise, as Mama had said earlier, our lives and new chapters are ruined by an endless loop of searching and searching.
In this case, the best I could hope for was that what we’d learned would be enough to give Annie and Mama peace.
When I returnedto my house Annie was curled up in one of the big chairs in the living room. She’d turned on the fire, and the orange glow cast her in a soft light.
God, she looked good in my living room.
Scout, who had stopped for a restroom break before following me into the house, trotted over to lick her hand.
She sat up straighter to give Scout a good scratch behind the ears and grant me a weak smile. It was obvious from her red eyes that she’d been crying.
I came to kneel at her side, overcome with emotion. She was so brave, facing all of this again. “You okay?”
She pointed at the television. The volume was on mute, but she had an entertainment show on the screen. “They’ve already talked about us. The sleazebag press are calling you the Billionaire Cowboy."
“Was it the picture from the other night?” I asked.
“That and a few others they somehow got of you and your brothers on the patio.”
“How in the world did they get that?” I sat in the chair next to her and rubbed my face with my hand. “This is nuts.”
She turned to face me, resting her elbow on the arm of the chair with her face in her palm. “This is my life. This is what you would have to put up with if we were to become something serious.”
Scout plopped down onto her pillow before the fire and watched us with a worried expression.
“Is that supposed to scare me away?” I asked lightly.
“Are you scared?”
“I don’t scare easily. I’ve faced down some of the meanest snakes in the world over a boardroom table. A few paparazzi are nothing.”
She smiled, this time less strained. “You’re from Montana, after all.”
