Softly and Tenderly (11 page)

A soft laughter of relief rippled through the sanctuary.

“Are you going up?” Jade leaned against Max, whispering. Lines began to form on each side of the room.

“No.” Flat, bordering on uncaring. Even angry.

“Why not?” She slipped her arm through his, her heart burning in her chest. She felt weak. Blindsided. Burdened and helpless.

“Because . . . Jade.” He jerked away, scooting forward and propping his elbows on the pew in front of him, resting his face in his hands.

Stinging, Jade sat back. But she couldn’t hold her question inside. “Max, what’s wrong?”

“Rice died. What do you think?” Jumping up, he stepped over her legs and marched down the aisle toward the doors.

Mama stretched her hand to Jade. “Give him some space, Jade-o. Death hits each one differently.”

Jade’s pulse surged though hot veins. He acted like she was somehow responsible for Rice’s death. For days she’d given him space. Ever since he came home with the news.

In the meantime, she’d lost this month to conceive. Max was edgy and terse, disappearing at odd hours, pacing the front porch with his cell phone in his ear, ending the calls when she came around.

And yesterday afternoon Jade battled with anxiety for the first time in well over a year. Was Max going to leave her? Was he back into drugs? Another woman?

Up front, Rice’s best friend since first grade wept at the mic. “So we took the tadpole bowl and poured it into Mrs. Campbell’s McDonald’s cup during recess. She always came to school with a McDonald’s Coke.” The mourners laughed low. “So there she is, teaching math, and reaches down to take a drink—”

The laughter rose from the mourners and rolled through the sanctuary. Jade swerved around to the back of the sanctuary, searching for Max. He stood by the doors talking to Rice’s cousin, Serena, who held Rice’s son. An electric tremble traveled across Jade’s torso. Her stomach constricted.

Facing forward again, she tried to listen to the stories and memories of Rice. Her thoughts melded into her emotions, sinking, sinking, sinking into a mental mire.

Burnt amber tainted her thoughts and swirled with purple ribbons. She felt loose, ungrounded, like she floated above the rhythm of her quickening pulse. Little by little, she faded from the room.

Miniscule thoughts wandered over deep, wide doubts.
Is God real? What if
it’s all a lie and Rice is locked in a box, six feet under. Forever
.

Breathe. Think of something excellent. Praiseworthy. Good
. Reverend Girden had taught her to use Scripture to battle the beast. Jade scrambled to remember, to align her thudding heart with the truth of the Word.

Peace . . . of Jesus . . . guard my heart . . . my mind. Do not have a spirit of
fear . . . do not have .
. .

The first-grade friend tiptoed past, catching Jade’s attention. Stopping, she leaned into the pew, wrinkling her brow. “I’m so glad Asa has Max. He’s going to need his daddy.” She squeezed Jade’s shoulder. “And you too, of course. More than ever now.”

“W-what?” Jade’s sticky palms stuck to the wooden pew seat. The sanctuary air was thin and hot, burning her lungs. And a cold reality inched down her back.

The woman’s light faded. “Asa. Max’s son. So sad about Rice.”

Jade lurched forward, the burnt amber and purple swirl defiling her. Her heart crashed. Holding down the mounting scream, Jade gave Mama a pained glance before running down the aisle and bursting through the sanctuary doors, losing herself in the light and crisp mountain air.

“Your son?” The grandfather clock in the hall chimed ten. Jade threw the bed pillow across the room, aiming at Max. He flinched and ducked. “You have a son? And I don’t?”

“I can’t talk to you if you keep yelling.”

“I’ll yell all I want.” Jade cupped her hands around her mouth and bent back. “My husband has a son!” She fired over to the dormer windows and shoved one open. “Hey, Begonia Valley Lane, Max Benson has a son, but his wife doesn’t!”

Max jerked her away from the screen, into the room. “Stop, you’re being stupid.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you were the stupid one in the room. The lying cheater.” Jade picked up the pillow and slammed it over his back. “Just like your father.”

“I am not like my father.”

Jade stared Max down. Her heart was numb. Her thoughts collided. Skin-tightening chills chased feverish sweats. The shades of burnt amber hovered in her mind. “When were you planning on telling me?”

“What do you think I’ve been doing the past week? Trying to figure out when to tell you. How.”

“Coward. You only sleep next to me every night.” Except when he fell asleep in the den watching ESPN. Which he’d done a lot since he brought home the news that Rice had died. “How? When?” She crossed her arms. “I want to know.”

“Vegas.”

“When did you go to Vegas with Rice?”

“The bachelor party. Burl’s plane. His girlfriend and Rice went along—”

“You took your ex-fiancée on your bachelor trip?” This wasn’t happening. No to the room. No to the chair under the angled wall. No to the curtains and shades. No to the night cloaking Whisper Hollow. No, no, no.

Max was the man she had pledged to love, honor, cherish. She’d opened her hand and surrendered her heart.

And he, with his sincere golden-brown eyes and kind voice, pledged to her the same. When he kissed her in front of five hundred wedding guests, sealing their deal, he’d pressed his hands into her back, holding her so close the heat of his body fused with hers and for a moment, she couldn’t tell where she ended and he began. “I didn’t take her on the bachelor trip. I wouldn’t . . . But when Burl’s girlfriend—you remember her, Kim, the one with the cheerleader voice—found out we were going, she begged to go along. She was Rice’s roommate, and they decided to have a girls’ weekend. I didn’t even see Rice after we landed, Jade. They went one way; we went another. Then Burl decided to break the bachelor weekend rules and hook up with Kim. Rice was kicked out. She pounded on my door, looking for a place to sleep.”

“And you let her in? She couldn’t get another room? Max, what did you think would happen?”

“Nothing. I thought nothing would happen. I just wanted to go to sleep. But Rice was hungry, so she ordered pizza. We started talking. Watched a movie—”

“Were you drunk?”

Max hung his head, hand gripping the top of the bedpost. “No, we weren’t. I fell asleep during the movie. So did Rice. In the same bed. Jade, you have to trust me, I never intended—”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Jade sank to the edge of the chaise. “Now I know why you came home so anxious to reaffirm our past being in the past. A week before our wedding. That’s why you met with Reverend Girden, making sure you could go the distance and be a faithful husband. And I bought it. Hook, line, and sinker.”

“I tried to convince myself it didn’t happen. Rice didn’t even speak to me on the flight home.”

“Well, that makes it all better, then.”

“Jade, I hated myself for it. So did Rice.”

“When did you find out about Asa?”

Max’s expression darkened. “When he was born.”

“Nineteen months ago? You’ve had nineteen months to tell me?” Jade wished the surreal atmosphere of their room would shatter. She spoke as if Max had simply overdrawn their checking account on a large boy-toy purchase. “We were supposed to be honest with each other, from our wedding on, Max. What happened to that pledge? Is that what the pills have been about?”

“Partly, I guess. I do have a bad back. But Rice wanted it this way, Jade. Me out of her life and his, you not knowing. She felt really bad about betraying you.”

“Oh, well then.” Jade stood, hurling the pillow to the bed. “I’m so glad you did things Rice’s way. And what vows did you make to her before God and man, Max?”

“You think I’ve liked knowing I had a son?”

Her knees buckled. “I can’t do this anymore.” She wanted out of his sight, out of his house, away from the day-old scent of his cologne. Snatching her purse from the floor, Jade ran down the hall and down the stairs, bursting out the kitchen door, her bare feet thudding on the cold, paved path to the garage.

Nine

“Daphne, open up.” Jade trembled as she pounded on her college roommate’s door. Unit 502.

She’d not planned to stop here, but she’d been driving around Chattanooga for several hours, weeping, wailing, sobbing, talking to her windshield, hammering her steering wheel, and finally reaching the end of her ability to process.

“Daphneeeee . . .” She hammered the door with her fists.
Please .
. . Since she’d left Max standing in their bedroom, she’d been a cacophony of emotions— tears, words, cramps, burnt amber swirls, the shimmy of the pickup’s wheel under her palm. “Daph!”

If she wasn’t home, she’d drive over to Margot’s, who was better than nothing, but the longer she’d practiced dentistry, the shorter and sharper her compassion. Taking advice from her hurt, like drilling a tooth without novocaine.

“Jade.” Daphne wore a pair of faded orange Vols sweats. Her auburn hair was sleeked back and gathered in a ponytail. Green goop covered her face.

“You look like that and opened the door?” Jade barged past her. “What if I was a Titans football player or Brad Paisley?”

“Actually, I thought it was the guy across the hall. He keeps asking me out.” She grabbed Jade’s shoulders. “What the heck happened to you?”

“A very bad day, Daphne.”

“Is this about your friend Rice’s funeral?”

“Ha, if only.” Jade walked the length of the loft, stopping at the window to peer toward the lights of Ross’s Landing.

She caught her reflection in the glass. Burnt amber and purple swirls dotted her reflection. Her body floated—her hands, her feet, her hair. In the next instant, she didn’t recognize her image cast against the darkness. The beating of her heart echoed in the hollow chamber of her soul. She had no beginning, no end. Her thoughts scrambled, reaching for solid ground.

Who stared at her? What was her name? She must have a name. A banging rang in her ears like the call over a canyon. Fear trickled down her spine. Her pulse surged. Who was she? She gripped her hair in her fists.

“Jade, which one?”

She whirled around at the sound of Daphne’s voice. “What?” Jade. She was Jade.

“Coffee or tea?” Her best girlfriend peered at her from behind the counter of the loft’s kitchen. “Or cocoa. I have cocoa, and cookies. I just bought cookies. I had a hankering for cookies today. This new diet is killing me. My publicity shots are next week and afterward I’m going straight out for a Big Mac. Did you say coffee, tea, or cocoa?”

“W-whichever.” She studied her hands, then her reflection. Jade Benson, yes, she was Jade Benson. And Daphne had been her college roommate.

As quickly as the instant came, it faded. But the fear of “when again” teased her heart, wrapped around her ribs, and coated her throat.

“So I told them, ‘Look, you hired me to help people with their problems; I’m not going to sensationalize just for ratings.’ Our sponsors agreed, and I got a raise.”

Jade smiled, or tried to anyway. “So, a raise? Good, good.” Sitting on the arm of the couch, she focused on Daphne. Panic, she understood. It gripped her for a few seconds, holding all of her senses captive. But this . . . terrified her. It was as if all of her senses died. She didn’t recognize herself.

“Believe you me, I needed it. This loft set me back a pretty penny, and as you can see, I’m still decorating. Okay, I’ve decided. How about my famous pulling-an-all-nighter coffee and cocoa concoction?”

“Max has a son.” The words fell off the edge of Jade’s lips and crashed to the floor.

The movement and noise of the kitchen ceased.

Jade stood, because sitting was suffocating. She leaned against the window and hooked her thumbs over her jeans pockets. With every blink, her eyes both burned and watered. Every muscle ached.

“A son?” Daphne came around the kitchen counter, arms folded, watching Jade. The green mask was starting to crack. “You can’t be serious. Not Max.”

“Rice is the mother.” Jade raised her hand to the base of her throat. Her fingers felt around for Paps’s praying hands medallion. Old habit. But the medallion was not tied around her neck. It lay at home in a cedar box.

“Rice? No . . .” Daphne pressed her hand over her heart, her eyes were like blue marbles on a golf green. It was hard to take her compassion seriously with her face plastered. “W-when? How? Hasn’t she been in California for the last two years?”

“Yes.”

“Then how can Max be the father? Did he go out to California on business? Run into her at a convention?”

“The son is nineteen months old. Remember the Vegas bachelor party?”

“Yeah, what about . . . Oh. She went on his bachelor weekend? The one where his friends kidnapped him and flew him out on some guy’s plane?” Daphne pulled out a high ladder-back chair from under the counter and sat.

“Yeah, Burl. His girlfriend Kim was Rice’s roommate. She and Rice begged to fly out with the guys for their own girls’ weekend.”

“Oh, Jade.”

“According to Max, they split up once they got to the strip. He didn’t see Rice again until she came to his room. Burl hooked up with Kim and Rice needed a place to crash.”