Hope Springs - 05 - Wedding Cake (19 page)

She thought about that conversation and about his loyalty, his dedication to Carla, especially since he had brought her to St. Mary’s, and wondered if they were truly divorced. She assumed that since Carla had remarried, there was evidence of a legal separation and divorce, but she wondered about an emotional break from the marriage or if there would always be a bond and connection between the two of them that she would never be able to sever.

She wondered if she was really able to be in what was beginning to feel like a polygamous relationship with Donovan. She realized that even though it would be hard to explain to anyone, she was starting to feel like a second wife to him, and that as much as she cared for him, as much as she was even starting to believe that she loved him, she was not able to be with someone who could not let go of an old lover.

Charlotte let out a long breath and knew that she was going to have to talk to Donovan soon. He was going to need to hear what she had to say. She folded her arms on the desk and dropped her head. She was sure their relationship was over.

O
h, hello.” Jessie was surprised to see James standing behind her as she grabbed the bags of groceries from the cart and placed them in the backseat of her car.

“Hey Jess,” James responded. He had a couple of bags in his hand. He stood near the rear of her automobile, keeping a respectable distance.

Jessie looked around the parking lot. She noticed his car was parked not too far away from hers. “Well, fancy meeting you here,” she said, placing her last bag on the floorboard and shutting the door.

“This is a small town. I’m surprised this hasn’t happened before now,” James noted. “Besides, it’s your shopping day. And the truth is that I’ve been coming every Thursday morning for the last six weeks hoping I would run into you.”

“Why didn’t you just come by the house if you needed to see me?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I just wasn’t sure I’d be well received if I just dropped by unannounced.”

“So you thought running into me in the parking lot at the grocery store would give you better access?”

“Maybe,” he answered.

“Well, I’m still surprised to see you,” she said.

“Why?” he asked. “A man’s got to eat,” he explained.

Jessie unbuttoned her jacket as the sun stood high and full. “I guess I wasn’t sure you’d stay in Hope Springs.” She stood behind the grocery cart. “I thought you might have gone back to D.C.”

James studied his wife and then dropped his head. He glanced up again. “Jessie, I love you. I’m not going anywhere. This is my home too.”

Jessie nodded slowly, holding up a hand. “I know. I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair. The children are glad you’re around.”

“No, it’s fine. I deserve that. It’s not your fault. And I’m not staying here for the children.”

Jessie looked at her husband. It had been a couple of months since he had moved in with their son. She had seen him at church a few times. He had come by the house to pick up some of his clothes. They had run into each other at Louise’s bridal shower and at a birthday party for one of their grandchildren, but except for polite greetings, they had not spoken in more than six weeks.

“I guess you’re planting,” she said, knowing that late spring was busy for James and their son as they made an annual attempt at farming. She thought small talk might be appropriate for this meeting. She figured she owed him that much. “The weather has been good and I guess we’re past the likelihood of having another frost.”

“We got the soybeans in at the end of last month. Strawberries are about to bloom. We have more plants this year than last. The tomatoes look like they may make it, although we do need some rain.” He glanced up at the sky. “They’re calling for some this weekend, I heard.”

Jessie nodded.

“You talk to Louise?” he asked.

“Yesterday,” she answered. “George is with hospice now. He’s mostly confined to a hospital bed. The nurses come twice a week. Somebody else comes to bathe and shave him regularly. A social worker has been helping them get all of his legal papers in line. He’s alert and coherent when he’s awake, but he’s taking quite a bit of morphine for the pain. He quit eating but he will take liquids from time to time.” She shook her head. “I told her that she was crazy for taking care of him but she claims that she doesn’t mind. Funny, I think she really likes doing that kind of thing, even for a guy she’s never cared for.”

James nodded and smiled. “She’s a good woman,” he noted.

“The best,” Jessie added.

“Have his children come to see him?” he asked. He had heard about the estrangement between George and his family. He knew that part of the reason Louise went to take care of him was that no one else would.

Jessie shook her head. “I don’t think so. But I’m pretty sure Lou is working hard on that too. I figure that’s part of the reason she decided to marry George, not just to take care of him but to try and help him reconcile with his family. Although I can only imagine that the two of them getting married just made things worse.”

“What do you mean?” James asked.

“Well, that someone else was stepping in to take care of George, that someone had taken their mother’s place, that it was Louise, Roxie’s best friend, and that she’s now entitled to the family wealth. It just seems too complicated to be readily accepted by his children.”

James leaned against the back of the car. “Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe they find some grace in recognizing that Louise has forgiven him. Maybe that helps them find a way to forgive him too. And I seriously doubt that anybody who knows Louise would think she was just doing this for the money and be angry at her for that.”

Jessie nodded. “No, she’s never been a gold digger, that’s for sure.”

“So maybe she’s helping fix things for Roxie’s family.”

“Well, I don’t see why George can’t fix things for himself and his children. Why can’t he just fix it?”

“Maybe he is in his own way. Maybe that’s why he asked Louise to marry him, to take care of him. Maybe he knew that she could help him with that too,” James commented.

Jessie glanced up, surprised.

“Maybe he knew that he couldn’t make it right by himself, that he couldn’t fix it by himself, so he fixed it by asking for help and thought that Louise, his wife’s best friend, the godmother of his children, had all the right skills for doing what needed to be done.” James shifted the grocery bags from one arm to another. “Sometimes men aren’t so good at saying what they feel. Sometimes when they’ve made a big mistake or a couple of them, they just don’t know how to fix the messes they’ve made. Sometimes they need help.”

Jessie studied her husband. She nodded. “Well, I just hope she doesn’t get herself in the middle of something terrible. Jumping into
a situation like that takes more than just being able to express one’s feelings.”

James nodded.

Cars hurried past them, and they stopped to watch people pulling in and out of parking spaces.

“And Charlotte, how is she?”

Jessie smiled. “She’s got love problems too,” she replied. “Her policeman is still involved with his ex-wife, and Charlotte is having a hard time competing with a first love and the ghost of an old marriage.”

“First love is hard to get around,” he responded. “I don’t really think it’s ever possible to compete with that.”

The person whose car was beside Jessie returned from the store. The couple had to move a bit closer together to get out of the way as the driver backed out and pulled away.

“Here, why don’t you put your things in here?” Jessie asked, motioning to the cart she had been leaning against.

James nodded, walked closer to her, and placed his bags inside the cart. The two of them stood awkwardly near the front of her car. They both looked around them at all the activity.

“Will she stay with the guy?” James asked, referring back to Charlotte and her boyfriend. It appeared as if he didn’t want the conversation to end.

“Don’t know,” Jessie replied.

They both noticed a friend from church walking near them. They smiled and waved.

“Is Bea going to her daughter’s wedding?” he asked, recalling the family drama of Jessie’s other friend and the fact that her daughter was
planning to get married in Mexico. “When is that wedding again?”

“Sometime in July,” Jessie answered. “And yes, I think Dick called Robin to RSVP and he went ahead and made reservations for the two of them.” She blew out a breath. “I don’t think Bea’s spoken to her daughter yet though.” She reached in her purse and took out a tissue. She wiped her nose. “What a mess it seems that we are all in.”

James reached inside his jacket. He pulled out a letter.

Jessie recognized it immediately as the letter from the woman in D.C. The letter she had found and confronted James about. The letter he had admitted came from a woman he had been in a relationship with. The letter Jessie had never read.

“I want you to read it,” he said, handing it to her. “I think it would help,” he added.

Jessie studied the letter, then looked back at her husband’s face. She didn’t reach for it. “I don’t see how that could help,” she said.

“Maybe it won’t but I think you should read it anyway,” he explained.

“Why now?” Jessie asked.

James shook his head. “I don’t know.” He hesitated. “Because I don’t want any secrets between us anymore. Because I think you should read what she had to say to me. Because I miss you and want to come home.”

Jessie steadied herself against the grocery cart. “Read it to me,” she said, surprising both of them. “You read it to me.”

James stood watching his wife, the letter still in his hand, extended to her. He glanced around them, the busy parking lot, people and cars coming and going. He nodded. He opened the letter and read:

James folded up the letter and placed it back in the envelope. He looked up at his wife, trying to measure her reaction to what he had read. There was a long pause.

She shook her head and glanced across the parking lot. “I miss Margaret,” she said, and dabbed at her eyes.

There was a pause. A breeze stirred, and a few old leaves danced around their feet.

“I miss her too, Jess,” James said. He leaned down to pick up a plastic bag that had landed near them. “I have thought about what she would tell us, what she’d say to me after what happened to us. I’ve wondered if she would hate me too.”

Jessie placed the tissue back in her purse. “She wouldn’t hate you, James. I don’t hate you.” She smoothed down the front of her jacket. “Margaret would say I was being too hard on you. That’s what she’d tell us.”

James studied his wife’s face and waited to see if she would explain
what she meant. He stuck the plastic bag down inside one of his bags.

“I already know what she would say because I’ve asked her a hundred times in these last six weeks and she always says the same thing.” Jessie shook her head and drew in a breath.

“She would tell me that what happened between you and that woman happened a long time ago, and that the biggest hurdle we had we have already overcome, and that was the one when you came to Hope Springs for Wallace and Lana’s wedding and me making the decision of whether or not to take you back. She would tell me that we spent enough time apart and that life is short and that we love each other and that I should quit being so hard on you, that I should quit punishing you because in the end you chose me, you chose to come home, and I now have the choice of love or bitterness.” Jessie cleared her throat, her voice straining a bit. “And she would say, ‘Jessie Jenkins, when have you ever chosen anything other than love?’ That’s what Margaret Peele would say.” She tugged at the bottom of her jacket and looked directly at her husband.