not spending more time with Maddie, and now you’re after him for wanting to spend a couple of weeks of quality time with her while he introduces somebody who’s going to be important in her life.”
Taylor considered that, but not for long. “See, there was this day, oh, eleven years ago, give or take a month or two. I went to him, sobbing, and told him I was pregnant with his baby. And you know what he said to me?”
“Something stupid? Like any seventeen-year-old boy with a noose around his neck?”
“Maddie is not a noose.”
“You know that, and so does he. Now. But his whole life changed in that moment, and he was still just a kid. Both of you were.”
“Eleven years ago he told me my baby wasn’t his problem, that I was the one who was pregnant, and I’d better leave him out of it.”
“And you’ve never forgiven him.”
Taylor hadn’t. At times she’d come close. She realized that nobody should be judged by something he said when the world as he knew it was collapsing. Later, when confronted by his parents, Jeremy had not denied that the baby was his. Of course, denial would have been futile, since a paternity test would have proved him a liar.
“You remember how it went,” she said. “We’d broken up. He was already dating somebody else when I realized I was going to have his baby. Later he told me he thought I was just making up a pregnancy to get even with him.”
“I can see that.”
“Really? I can’t. He knew me better than that.”
“Maybe not. He was the class bad boy. Your mother wouldn’t let you date him, right? Whenever you saw him you were sneaking behind her back. How well could you know him? How much time could you spend together? “
“Enough to make a baby.” Taylor shook her head. “I guess we’ve worked things out well enough, considering our start. There’s no love lost between us, but both of us love Maddie. Now, everything’s going to change.”
“Particularly if you don’t lose the attitude.”
Samantha had been her friend for so long that Taylor couldn’t be offended. She just reached over and socked her on the arm.
“I don’t think it’s Jeremy,” Samantha said, unperturbed. “I don’t think you want to share Maddie. And you’re wondering what you’ll do without her for two weeks. Part of you wants her to have a closer relationship to her daddy, and part of you probably hopes she’ll get along with her new stepmother. But another part of you hopes the whole thing will blow up, and she’ll never want to leave you again.”
“If that’s true it sounds pretty squirrely.”
“No, it sounds pretty natural. I don’t have that problem, since Edna’s father was never in the picture. But if he showed up tomorrow and said he’d been searching for us all this time, I’d probably feel the same way you do. Like he was the enemy clambering over my castle walls, an invader trying to stake a claim to a piece of my daughter.”
“And people think the hard part of being a single parent is not having anybody to share childrearing with.”
“The hard part of being a mother is knowing when to let go and when to hang on.”
For no good reason, Taylor thought of her own mother. As always, she was sorry she had.
Chapter Seven
First Day Journal: April 29
I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to forget my past. Maybe I thought if I changed myself into someone else, the past would fade away with my Appalachian accent and one day a country girl named Lottie Lou Hale would cease to exist.
Now I know how much time I wasted. No matter how hard we try to lock memories away, they break free, sometimes taking on new life because we witness others with the same struggles, like the young woman sleeping in my guest room this morning. Just like Harmony Stoddard, I was once nearly homeless, with no one to help me and nothing to fall back on.
It’s not a memory I recall with fondness. But this morning, while I wait for my guest to wake up, I’ll take it out again and examine it here.
Almost exactly seven years after Hearty’s Sunday morning appearance at the Trust Independent Baptist Church, I am sitting beside him on a bench in front of the pulpit, and this time no one is trying to persuade him to leave.
In the past year someone has donated screens, and someone else convinced the county to run an electric line so that now floor fans blow channels of steamy air over the mourners lucky enough to be sitting close to them.
I’m not one of those. I’m sitting in the front row, close enough to my grandmother’s coffin to wish I could hop up and brush away the flies that entered the church with the mourners. I know better than to make a scene. I am seventeen, newly graduated from high school, and now I’m a woman. None of my grandmother’s friends gathered today would appreciate even a pause in Preacher Pittman’s words. Those attending came out of respect, but I know that no one wants to sit in the heat a moment longer than necessary. Fans or not, the temperature has to be close to ninety and climbing as the sun rises higher in the sky.
“Would anybody out there like to speak?” the preacher asks at last.
I turn to my father, who wears a clean shirt and pants and is, for once, freshly shaved. Even Hearty Hale realized he had to show up at his mother-in-law’s funeral or risk losing whatever shred of credibility is still attached to his name.
Do not get up, I mouth.
He narrows his eyes, as if trying to make sense of that. I realize saying something about Gran has never occurred to him.
From behind us a neighbor stands and begins to speak, detailing the kindness my grandmother showed his family, the food she brought when his wife was sick, little gifts for his children when Gran could hardly afford bacon and beans. Someone else remembers how hard she worked and the way she held her little family together after her husband died, even giving her son-in-law and granddaughter a place to live. The unspoken message, of course, is that anybody who put up with Hearty all those years is already sitting at the feet of the Lord.
I know my grandmother earned her neighbors’ respect one thoughtful act at a time. I also know that now that Gran has finally succumbed to the torment of her twisted body, respect for anyone at the old Sawyer farm will be buried right beside her. The locals will feel sorry for me, of course, sorry I’ve been left to cope with my alcoholic father and his debts and antics, but they’ll stay as far away as possible, lest they get sucked into the drama of my life when their own are already difficult enough.
I gather my courage and stand when it’s clear no one else intends to speak.
“My grandmother was the only mother I ever knew,” I say, my voice strong and clear, despite the lump in my throat. “She was a God-fearing Christian, and she practiced every principle anybody ever preached from that pulpit. I think she held on to life just long enough to see me graduate, but I’m glad she’s gone now, because she suffered. A whole lot.” I clear my throat. “I just want to say thank you for those of you who were kind to her and to me while she lay dying. She would have wanted me to say that.”
I sit down, and the preacher nods. A hymn is sung, a prayer is said and the service is over.
We all stand as four of the deacons come to the front to shoulder Gran’s pine coffin and carry it outside.
I follow, and in a moment my father stands to follow behind me. I hope he doesn’t stumble or worse. It will be a testimonial to my grandmother if Hearty can make it to the graveside without creating a scene.
Gran asked to be buried at our farm, in the family cemetery next to her husband and my mother. Outside, I glance at my father, who is leaning against a tree, his eyelids drifting closed. I wonder if he’s sober enough to remember where he parked his pickup