Love Lifted Me (8 page)

“You are his mom and if you don't want to do this, then we don't.” Max surrendered, raising his hands, then letting them fall to his sides.

“No, Max, you can't put this on me. I won't have you resent me on top of everything else we're going through. You can go without me, you know.”

“Not an option, Jade. Not an option.” He'd anticipated resistance. After all, this idea came out of the blue for him too. Max had hoped to persuade Jade, but she remained as solid as the mountain ridge.

“We're at a stalemate then. You want to go. I don't.”

“Then we pray. You pray, I'll pray. Can you do that much for me? There's a solution in here somewhere, Jade. But whatever we do, we do it together.”

“All right, I can agree to prayer.” Finally, she melted a little, softened her stance. “Max, why does it mean so much to you? Is it more than just a chance to live out your hip-pocket dream?”

“I've asked myself the same thing a hundred times.” He returned to his rocker and eased against the ladder back, setting it into motion. “The firm, our clients, they don't need me, Jade. They
like
me for what I can do for them, but there are plenty of lawyers to fill the bill. But those boys at Colby High have no one to believe in them. Since I can remember, people have believed in me, encouraged me. I want to give that back to boys who need it. Their fathers and grandfathers played for a winning program. If I don't go, there might not be a football program this year. First time in a hundred years. Since the school was founded.”

“No one? Surely an assistant coach, a booster, the parents—”

“Chevy said he'd just as soon shut it down than to get the wrong coach again. There's politics going on but he's not forthcoming.”

“Then you can't go. Walk into a firestorm? It's crazy.”

“Not if God's calling, Jade. Remember the girl who came to speak at church last fall? She was, what, twenty-one? Spent six months in Africa working with boys rescued from guerilla armies. One day she called her missions supervisors and said, ‘God's telling me to speak to the leader of the boys' army.' They thought she was crazy at first, remember? But agreed it was God and let her go. She traveled all night on a bus alone and when she got there, the man agreed to speak with her. A little blond, blue-eyed girl. If she could step up, why can't we? She won over that army lord. Why can't I, we, win over forty high school boys?” The emotion in his voice surprised him. He batted the moisture from his eyes, then bent forward with his face in his hands, his heart churning.

After a moment, Jade returned to her rocker. “I said I'd pray, Max. And I will.”

So it wasn't up to him anymore. It was up to the God of heaven and earth. Only He could change Jade's heart.

Eight

Liz Carlton, one of Jade's regular consigners, popped her head into the Blue Umbrella. “Jade, sugar, you'll want to see this.”

“What? The coon dogs running?” July Days in Whisper Hollow meant anything goes. Yesterday afternoon, two rival bakers had celebrated Pie Fight Day. Main Street was littered with piecrust, berries, and whipped cream. Today was Coon Dog Day.

“You'll wish it was the coon dogs.” Liz tipped her head toward Main Street. “Hurry.”

She followed Liz out.
This better be good
. Business was slow today so Jade spent the quiet moments praying, asking God to align her heart with Max's. Or his with hers. Football. Texas. It just never, ever entered her mind as a life they'd lead. Even though she did love the game.

How many hours of Midnight Football had she played in Prairie City?

A crowd gathered on the sidewalk outside the Blue Umbrella. Mae Plumb, the owner of Sugar Plumbs, glanced at Jade and squinted through the trail of smoke rising from her cigarette.

“She's gone plum wild, Jade.”

“Who?”

An air horn blasted the air and knocked Jade's lulled heart awake. The crowd leaned back in unison, ooohing and ahhing.

“Jade,” Mae called again. “You best do something, shug.”

“Me? Why me?” Jade cut through the crowd and stepped into the street. The air horn blasted again. Jade spotted a golf cart at the top of the hill.

“Get your Rebel Benson gear, folks.” The horn blasted. The cart drifted forward. Clothes flew out of the side and hit the pavement.

Oh no. June
. Jade started up the hill, easy, careful not to spook her prey. More clothes flitted from the cart, hung in the air, then sank to the street.

“Golf clubs, shoes, balls, and towels. Platinum cuff links.” Two shiny bobbles arched out of the cart. A hiker raced into the street. “Good for you, boy.” June blasted the air horn. “I got Armani. Ralph Lauren. Hand-stitched leather loafers all the way from It'ly.” The shoes clunked against the street.

June blasted the horn again. And again. The crowded thickened. Cars pulled over and tourists unloaded.

“Come one, come all, get your Rebel Benson souvenirs right here.” Blastblast of the horn. More clothes littering the street. The golf cart eased over the yellow line. A cluster of onlookers scrambled out of the way.

“Whisper Hollow mistresses of the not-so-honorable Judge Rebel Benson, come out, come out wherever you are. Heck, maybe even a tourist or two has had a tryst with the noble judge. Get your Rebel Benson souvenirs.”

Shirts fluttered in the air.

Jade met the cart in the middle of Main. “June, what are you doing?” She looked sane. Jade sniffed. She wasn't drunk.

“Mind your own, Jade.” June blasted the air horn in her face. Jade winced, leaning away. “Look there, my old bridge buddy Pollyann Markham. Admit it, I know you had a little crush on my husband, Pollyann. Didn't you have a weekend at your sick aunt's a few years back? The same weekend Reb had an emergency lawyers' convention. There's no such thing as emergency lawyers' conventions.”

Blast. Clothes. Another blast. Pollyann Markham disappeared in the crowd.

“June.” Jade walked alongside the cart. “Why don't you hit the brake and let me climb behind the wheel?”

Blast. “No.”

“June, you've lost your mind.” A man called from deep in the crowd, “Go home.”

“Forget it, Bob Zimmer. I've earned this, don't you think?” June tossed another bundle of clothes from the cart. A watch. Rebel's new Cartier. Ties. “Get your Judge Rebel Benson souvenir.”

“Pull over, let me drive.” Jade tried to get in, but June pressed the gas.

“You're not the police, Jade.” June gunned the gas again so Jade lost her hold on the side and barely kept herself from crashing to the pavement. Okay, she saw how June wanted to play.

“June!” She pulled over. Finally. And stepped out, raising a megaphone to her lips.

“Listen to me, Whisper Hollow. You marry the man you love with bright, blinding, I mean
blinding
stars in your eyes, believing true love has chosen you. On your wedding day, you walk down the aisle toward your handsome groom, tall and resplendent in his hand-tailored tux, heart exploding with so much joy, love, and excitement you can barely draw a deep breath.”

“June, give me the megaphone.” Jade tried to snatch it but her tennisplaying mother-in-law was too quick. She ran around to the other side of the cart. The crowd shifted with her.

“Then it happens. Kaboom. Lies, cheating, lust; the destroyers of all dreams. I'm here to tell you, ladies and gentlemen”—June pointed to the crowd, an evangelist for the lovelorn—“there is no such thing as true love, or fidelity. No such thing as 'til death do you part. Oh no,
parting
is the death. Only trouble is, the man still lives, kicking and breathing, reminding you every day that forty-one years of your life were given to the wrong man. What then? Some of y'all know what I'm talking about. Liam Lowe, you been married, what, four times? And you, Beth Trout, you must have had two, maybe three affairs. Was your marriage worth a dalliance into adultery?”

Several onlookers gasped. Some laughed.

“That's right. It's shocking. It happened to my own daughter-in-law, right, Jade? Thought she married a faithful man, a true man.”

“June, stop.” Embarrassment burned down Jade's middle. “Why are you doing this?”

June lowered the megaphone. “Because I'm sick and tired of lies and secrets.”

“You've lived with them for forty years. What's changed?”

“Me.”

June had caught Rebel with another woman back in the spring, about the same time Jade discovered Max had a son. Together, the two of them drove Mama back to Prairie City in a '66 convertible Cadillac. Pink. A few days later Reb flew to see her in the company jet and pledged to change his ways.

“June, you're a classy, cultured lady. This is beneath you.”

June eyed Jade with a hard optic rebuttal and jammed the megaphone to her lips. “It's time to take life by the reins. Don't let life rein you.”

Jade flattened her hand over the megaphone speaker. “So you're throwing his stuff in the streets and calling out his mistresses?” Not that Reb didn't deserve it.

“I'm sixty-four years old, Jade. I'm through with pretending. Everyone in this town is hurting, hiding, thinking no one knows the things they've done.

Well I do and I'm putting it all out there.” June jerked away from Jade and went back to the megaphone. “Did y'all know my son had a baby outside his marriage? Sure did. And Jade here had an abortion when she was sixteen. Now she can't get pregnant to save her—”

Jade lunged at her mother-in-law, shoving her into the golf cart, stumbling and tripping, and pinned her against the seat. “You blast your business if you want, but you don't blast mine.” Hard, passionate words.

The woman had lost her mind. Lost. Her. Mind. Jade yanked the megaphone from June's tan, slender, bejeweled hand. “You're making a spectacle of yourself.”

“Oh, Jade.” Her laugh was weak. “I've been a spectacle for a long, long time. Only today, I'm in on it. Now let me up.” June righted herself, fixing her hair and smoothing her hand over her tennis top. Her congregation started to dwindle.

Jade spotted Chandler Doolittle from the
Whisper Hollow News
, a weekly paper, creeping along the back of the crowd with his camera.

“Chandler's here, June.”

“Oh good, he got my message.” June stretched to see him, smiling when she did, and waved.

Jade ran around to the wheel and hopped into the cart before June got out. She released the brake and mashed the gas. “Hang on, June.”

“Wait, did Chandler get my picture? Woohoo, Chandler, did you get it all down for your ‘Hollow Happenings' column? Call me.”

“June, stop. You don't want this on the Internet.” Jade powered the cart down the hill, made a U-turn at the light, and headed back up toward the country club. She hollered at Mae as she passed, “Get Rebel's stuff.”

What bothered Jade the most about June's Main Street confessional was the truth embedded in her words. The woman spoke from experience and from her heart. Embarrassment aside, Jade believed everyone within hearing distance of June went home convicted about examining their hearts. Even if for a moment.

You marry the man you love with bright, blinding stars in your eyes, believing true love has chosen you . . . Lies, cheating, lust; the destroyers of all dreams . . . There is no such thing as true love, or fidelity
.

Despite the cordial culture of Whisper Hollow and the full church pews on Sunday mornings, the Hollow harbored secrets. Infidelity. Backstabbing. Gossip. Lost love. Destroyed dreams.

Standing at the sink peeling potatoes for dinner, Jade realized she'd already experienced a taste of the world June described, and it went down bitter.

After dropping off June and her borrowed cart at the club, Jade had closed the Blue Umbrella and driven up to Eventide Ridge to think and pray. For June. For Max. For the secret she knew about Asa. For her own heart and weak trust. It took a good hour to exhaust herself at the foot of the cross.

Then she came home and Googled a few things.

A car door slammed. Jade looked up, out the kitchen window. Max rounded the corner of the garage hoisting Asa on his shoulders. Against the green backdrop of their wooded yard and the golden trails of afternoon sun lacing through the treetops, her husband and son created a serene picture.

“Mama.” Asa ran to her when Max set him down. “Look.” He held up a toy car.

“Drugstore.” Max set a small bag on the counter.

“Very nice, son.”

“I thought we could watch a movie tonight so I picked up some snacks at Kidwell's.” He held up a box of Milk Duds, rattling the contents. “But you have to eat your dinner first.”

He could be so wonderfully goofy. “I'm fine with dinner first. You're the junk food junkie.” Jade peeked into the bag. M&Ms, all varieties, chips, jelly beans, popcorn, and licorice. “Who else is watching this movie with us?”