Laney giggles. She must’ve been on the front porch, waiting.
I can hardly make her out on such a cloudy night with only a sliver of moon to see by. It looks like she’s changed clothes. She’s wearing something pale and, when she puts her foot on the tire and swings up into the Jeep, I can see that it’s short. Even in the low light, I can see lots and lots of long, tan leg.
My pulse picks up, and it has nothing to do with her sneaking up on me.
“What are you doing up? I figured you’d be asleep. You need rest.”
Laney moves to stand on the backseat, her bare feet on the cushion and her back braced against the roll bar.
“Who can sleep after a night like tonight?” She pauses before she adds, “And I don’t mean the fire.”
Here we go!
I take a deep breath. I knew this was coming. By giving in to what’s between us, that means I have to be open with her. She’ll expect that. But hell, she couldn’t even wait until morning?
For a few seconds, I have a burst of doubt. How will she react? Will it change anything?
Setting my bag on the ground, I hop into the backseat of the Jeep, repositioning her feet to the space on the seat between my legs. She might as well get comfortable. If we’re gonna talk, there’s no time and place like the present.
THIRTY-SEVEN: Laney
Jake settles my feet back between his legs and leans his head back. Looking down on him, all I can see is his shadowed face and the occasional sparkle of the low light in his eyes.
I didn’t come here to pressure him. I came here to . . . to . . . I don’t know what. To be with him. To see if what happened was real. To see where we go from here.
I came because I couldn’t stay away.
And because, once again, I feel hope. And, this time, I need to know if it’s shared.
But I don’t want to move too fast. Jake has ghosts. Demons. Things he hasn’t wanted to share. Since I don’t know what they are, I can’t possibly know if I’m about to step on a landmine. It makes proceeding tricky. But not impossible. I just have to be patient.
That’s what I’m telling myself when I hear him sigh and feel his fingers touch the top of my bare feet and start absently making slow circles.
I’m thinking of how to start, of where to start when Jake speaks. His voice is low. And distant. He’s somewhere else in time. And, this time, he’s taking me along with him.
“When I was little, before Jenna was born, Mom and Dad used to take me out into the orchard with them almost every day. Sometimes we’d pick peaches. Sometimes we’d play hide-and-go-seek in the rows of trees. Sometimes we’d walk in the shallow parts of the river. We had breakfast and lunch and dinner together more often than not. Even after Mom got sick, we did a lot together. It was after she got pregnant with Jenna that things got so much worse.”
Surprisingly, there’s no bitterness in his voice. Obviously, he doesn’t resent Jenna for what happened to his mother.
“Her cancer fed on the estrogen. It spread like wildfire while she was carrying Jenna. After she delivered, Mom started chemo and radiation. She took treatment for a couple of years, but the disease was always a step ahead of the cure. The last few months, all the doctors could do was keep her comfortable. Even as young as I was, I knew what was going on. I guess I just didn’t know how much it would change things. And what my new role would be.
“Dad was busy taking care of the orchard and Jenna. Mom was in bed all the time, so I was kind of lost. I spent a lot of time in there with her. I’d color on the floor in her room or play with my cars. Sometimes we’d watch TV together or she’d read me a story. If I ever went out to play, it was always by myself, which was never fun, so I didn’t stay long. I always ended up back in Mom’s room. With her. I got an up close and personal view of what she went through and how miserable she was.”
I listen with rapt attention. My heart bleeds for Jake the child, as well as Jake the man. I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like for a little Jake to have to watch his mother go through so much, and to have to do it all by himself for the most part. In the midst of it all, everyone got busy with life and Jake got pushed to the side. Forgotten.
“It was nothing unusual for her to ask me to bring her something—ginger ale, ice chips, a washcloth—so the day she asked me to hand her one of her pill bottles, I didn’t think anything of it. I guess some part of me wondered why Dad had started keeping them up in the cabinet rather than letting her take them by herself like she’d always done. But at eight years old, you just don’t really think about stuff like that. So I didn’t hesitate to get them for her.”
Pulse pounding and lip trembling, I have an idea where this is going. It’s all I can do not to cry bitter, heartbroken tears for this man that I love.
“She had me hand her the glass of water that always sat on her nightstand. Then she had me get up on the bed so she could hug me. She told me she loved me and that I would always be her big, strong boy and then she told me to go play outside until dinnertime. So I did.” His pause is deep. And dark. And haunted. “That was the last time I saw her alive.”
I can barely swallow past the lump in my throat. The ache in my chest explodes into an unimaginable spray of sympathy at his next words.
“My mother overdosed. She killed herself. But she didn’t kill herself out of weakness or selfishness. She didn’t do it to end her suffering. She did it to end ours. I once heard her tell Dad that she could live with what she had to go through, but that it was breaking her heart to see what it was doing to us. Dad told her we were fine, that we would always be better off with her around. No matter what. But she didn’t believe it. I could see it in her eyes more and more every day. She thought her life was hurting us. So she took it.”
I’m doing everything I can to let my tears fall in silence, to let Jake have this time, without interruption.
“When Dad found her, he yelled for me to come upstairs. He was sitting on the floor crying, holding Mom in his arms. The pill bottle was still in her hand. All I remember is him screaming at me, ‘You did this! You did this!’ I tried to explain, but he wouldn’t even listen to me. He told me to get out, that he didn’t even want to look at me. So I left. I went back outside for a while.
“For hours, I watched the door. I kept waiting for him to come back downstairs, but he never did. I remember that it got dark and I was so hungry, so I went into the kitchen and opened a can of SpaghettiOs for me and Jenna and we ate ’em cold. Nothing was ever the same after that night.