Searching for Tomorrow (Tomorrows) (8 page)

He reaches through the open window and places a gentle hand on my arm. “I’ve b
in praying for ye, lassie. I dinna care whit onybody says. Ma Gertrue, God rest ‘er soul, she’s been gone nearly twenty years noo, an I still find myself telling ‘er stuff. Dinna be letting onybody try te tell ye yer heart is wrang. The heart kens, lassie. The heart kens.” He gives my arm a little squeeze and then backs away from my car.

The heart knows.
I see the glistening sheen in his eyes, and realize that Mr. Jasper understands exactly how I feel because he has been right where I am. I give him a small smile, and drive through the gates towards Mother Tidwell’s house.

Before I feel even remotely ready, I find myself standing outside Mother Tidwell’s front door. I often wish I felt comfortable enough to just walk in and announce myself, but she and I have never had that sort of relationship.

As I raise my hand to ring the doorbell, I catch a slight tremor and know that I have to calm my nerves. Mother Tidwell loves to prey on my weaknesses, and timidity would definitely qualify as one.
Deep breathe in. Deep breathe out. You’ve got this, my little Wrynn.
For just a moment, I swear that I can hear Tripp whispering encouraging words to me. Like any other time I imagine him with me, I close my eyes to draw him closer for as long as I can hold onto him.

“What in Heaven’s name are you doing? Are you trying to embarrass me in front of my neighbors? You look like an idiot. Get inside before someone see
s you and I have to explain what your problem is.”

Hmmm … nope, that is definitely not Tripp’s voice that I am hearing now.
That familiar feeling of dread starts at my toes and slowly works its way up my body. By the time I blink, I know that my face is beet red because I can feel the heat coming off my cheeks. There she is, standing right in front of me.

“G-g-good morning
, Mother Tidwell.” I pause to clear my throat, praying for saliva because my mouth is suddenly bone dry. “How are you doing on this beautiful May morning?”

“Did you really come all the way out here to ask stupid questions? Now get in here before I change my mind.
” She turns away from me without another word and walks back into the foyer.

I wouldn’t put it past her to slam the door in my face, so I quickly take the three steps that are necessary for me to cross the threshold into the house. I hesitate before turning to shut the door, wondering
—and not for the first time—if I am safe being alone with her.

“Well, come on in. Spit it out. I don’t have all day to mess with you. If this is you
r idea of crawling back, then you definitely need to work on your approach. I am aware that school ends in a week or so, and I confess, I really thought you would have come around sooner. Surely you need help this summer with those three brats of yours.”

Wow
.... Just, wow. For just a moment or two, anger rears its ugly head, but blind rage goes against everything my parents taught me. If I lose my temper and just rip into her, then I am no better than she is. I refuse to stoop to her level and allow her to change the person that I am; the person that Tripp fell in love with. I reach deep for the strength that at times eludes me, remembering that I must do this for Liam.

I look Mother Tidwell in
her crazed eyes. Something is seriously wrong with this woman, and I forget all about the reason I came here in the first place. I finally voice the question that has been in my mind for years. In a quiet voice I ask, “What have I ever done for you to hate me so much? Seriously, I’ve been nothing but kind and respectful to you in all the time we’ve known each other.”

I see the anger brewing in her eyes, but there’s something else there. Something I don’t recognize. “Hate? I don’t hate you
, child. I
loathe
you. I
loathe
that good-for-nothing brother of yours, your common, backwards parents, and those three sniveling brats.”

Stunned to the core, I can do nothing but stare at her with horror written on my face. I attempt to speak, but
as my mind spins in confusion, I only manage stutters and half questions. “L-l-loathe? W-w-why w-w-would you … I don’t, I don’t … why?”
Why
is the only word that is playing through my brain on repeat. It’s like an old record with a scratch, and the needle keeps catching it, playing the same thing, over and over again. WHY? I have never given her a reason to detest me this much.

“Why? I marry that old tightwad
, and what happens? He dies on me and leaves me with only a modest monthly allowance to live on. I raise his ungrateful bastard as my own, and Channing repays me by taking up with commoners. Thankfully, no one other than Mister Tidwell and myself even knew about Channing’s trust, or you would have latched onto it and ruined that for me, too. I sacrificed my life for him, and what do I get from it? Nothing, I tell you. Nothing. Until he died. Now, it’s all mine.”

Tightwad. Allowance. Bastard. Trust. Died.
What is she talking about? What do those words mean? I feel off balance, as though I should know what she is saying, but I just can’t quite grasp the meaning of the words in my shocked state. “I-I don’t understand. W-what exactly do you mean?”

“It’
s easy, but I guess even easy is difficult for you. Mr. Tidwell’s family was very rich. Mr. Tidwell himself was worth millions. Did he share that with me? No. When he was alive, he controlled every dime that came in, and every penny that I spent. If my monthly allowance was gone, I had to beg for more money until my next allotment was due. Do you have any idea how it embarrassed me to beg the man I slept with for money to buy a new dress or to have my hair styled? It is very difficult to keep up appearances when your husband is a cheapskate.”

I can see that this conversation is just making her angrier
. It’s almost as if she is talking to herself, as if she has stewed and brewed over these thoughts for years. I can’t leave until I get some answers. She opened this can of worms, and I need to understand exactly what she is saying before I leave. I take a few seconds to gather my thoughts because in my heart, I hope this is the last time I am ever alone with this woman. I can’t help but think that there is something seriously wrong with her. The wild look in her eyes can’t just be from her anger with me.

“Mother Tidwell, I don’t understand what you’re saying. Yo
u said bastard child. Who are you talking about? Tripp?”

“Don’t call him that foul name. Your family took all the efforts I made to mold him into a respectable person and completely ruined him. When Mr. Tidwell died, I finally had my chance to get that boy away from
my meddling in-laws.” She turned from me, and I almost thought she was walking out on the conversation. After taking a few more steps, she whips around and the depth of fury pouring from her eyes causes me to shrink back, and again, I cannot help but wonder if she’s a danger to me. “With Channing’s trust money, I could have finally made something of myself rather than being a lap dog who pants for something more. All of my dreams are within my reach now. With Channing dead, his trust reverts to me on his thirtieth birthday. I’ve tried to get that date changed because I deserve it now with all that he put me through, but the trust details cannot be changed.” Her words seem once again as if she’s completely forgotten that I’m here.

That bit of information slowly seep
s through my brain and I struggle to grasp the significance of what she is saying. So many things are crowding my brain trying to get first place in my thoughts. Oh my gosh. I think I have it, but do I really want to know what she’s implying? “Are you saying that Tripp isn’t your son? And because he’s dead,
you
will get some trust payout that he didn’t even know about?”

“Mr. Tidwell was involved with a commoner, a low class secretary
that he worked with before we met. She became pregnant, and there were complications. She was helpless, and couldn’t do anything right, so he hired me to be her nurse. When the time came for her to deliver the child, she was too sick and weak to do it correctly. She started hemorrhaging and the doctor couldn’t stop the bleeding. When that boy was taking his first breaths, she was taking her last.” The rapid-fire change of emotions that roll across her face have me, again, wondering if Mother Tidwell is losing her mind. “It was very simple task to convince Mr. Tidwell that he needed me, that I could help him raise the boy without anyone being wise to the fact that he had strayed from the path his parents would approve of. Lord knows, he always had to have his mama’s approval for everything. I finally had my ticket to bigger and better things, and no one could stop me.”

Lord have mercy, how in the world has she kept all this bitterness locked up inside her for so long
? I can feel the venom in her words. What benefit did she have by holding her tongue? Tripp has been gone for almost three years, and I am just now learning all of this? She has hated me all these years, but there has to be a reason that she has kept coming around since we got word of his death.

“I sold the house in Smyrna as soon as I could. I just couldn’t take on
e more minute under the snooping eyes of my in-laws. Mr. Tidwell and I had only been married for seven years, and his parents didn’t approve of me even after he was dead. No matter what I did, I could never win their approval. I wore the right kind of clothes. I went to the proper country clubs. I entertained the high society people. I even joined their little, old country church. But no move I made was good enough for them.”

Now, I should probably just keep my mouth shut right now, but this sounds exactly
like the way she has always treated me. If she hated it so much, why did she choose to repeat the same pattern with me? I have to ask because it is something I have wondered about since Tripp and I went to see her after he joined the Army. “If you hated the way you think they treated you, why do you treat me the same way? I have never been able to figure out how to please you, no matter what I say or do. Why do you, as you say, loathe me?”

“Are you really so stupid? After all
that I’ve told you, how can you not understand? I have no use for you at all. It was always the money. Channing’s father had inherited a fortune from his grandfather. When Channing was just a few weeks old, Mr. Tidwell kept part of the money for us to live on, but he put most of it into an irrevocable trust for Channing to receive when he turned thirty. Mr. Tidwell planned to tell Channing on his twenty-first birthday, but he died long before that. After Mr. Tidwell’s death, I liquidated every asset I could as fast as I could, left that town, and never once looked back. The only thing I kept from that time was the house that Channing and I lived in when we first moved here. Mr. Tidwell had bought it for when he retired.”

Once again, she walks a few steps away, twisting her hand
s and mumbling to herself. I lean forward from the waist, straining to hear what she’s saying, but am unable to. When she turns, I straighten immediately and hope she doesn’t notice my curiosity. “The first thing I started doing was buying up local property and investing my money in improvements. Within five years, I had made enough money to replace every dime I’d spent, plus some. Now I own half the town, and have enough money in the bank that I will never have to worry about being poor or hungry again. My latest acquisition is the trust that Mr. Tidwell set up for Channing. That stupid boy did all the work for me when he got himself killed. Who knew that it would be so easy?”

The id
ea that Tripp would have come into a trust this year, had he lived, seems almost funny. We lived very frugally on his salary from the Army, not that we had much choice.

Whe
n Tripp and I got married, Papa and Nana gave us their ‘summer retreat’, the house that the girls and I now live in. They wanted to make sure that Tripp always had a place to call home, and return to when he was on leave. Nana passed away a couple of years after Annie was born, and Papa made sure that Tripp and I received everything that she had wanted us to have. We used part of that money to pay off my college loans, and invested the rest. When Tripp died three years ago and Maggie was born, Papa came to live with the girls and me. Though getting on up in age, he was such a big help, and we all fell deeper in love with the warm, patient, caring man that he was. When he fell last year cleaning out our gutters and broke his back, it didn’t take long for his heart to follow Nana’s on to Heaven. As his only living family, the girls and I were also his only heirs. Only the thought of him now being with Nana and Tripp again gives me a small amount of comfort. I can only hope that they don’t see how miserable I am, and how very much I miss them.

“Mother Tidwell, I guess I am still a little confused. If you’ve kept this secret for so l
ong, why are you telling me now? What do you hope to gain from me knowing about it?”

“I kept it secret because I wanted to make sure that you and your three little brats weren’t in some way entitled to receive even a small portion of it. If that had been the case, I would have done everything within my power to keep you from getting one red cent.
I’ve had my lawyers working on finding me an answer for almost three years, and they assure me that the money is all mine to do with as I see fit. I earned that money the old-fashioned way, on my back. I slept with that mean old miser and I sacrificed the best years of my life to raise his brat, so I am only taking my payment now. I made sure he had everything he needed to live comfortably, so no one can complain about that.”