Love Comes Home (26 page)

“And Kate,” Birdie said. “Kate doesn’t think so, but she does.”

Birdie was quiet then as they rode along the dark road. Jay pretended he had to focus on driving and hoped she wouldn’t remember he hadn’t answered her question about his sister. He didn’t like thinking about Amanda Faye. It brought out too much guilt. Not that he had any reason to feel guilty. As far as he knew, Amanda was fine. She’d be—he had to stop and think about that—twenty-five. Probably married with kids. She’d been a sweet kid of around eight when he last saw her. She had other brothers. Those his father and stepmother had after they shipped Jay off to his aunt’s house. Amanda wouldn’t have missed him being around at all.

But Birdie wasn’t one to be sidetracked when she wanted to know something. She was like a bulldog shaking whatever was hiding what she wanted to know until it fell out. Another thing she’d learned from Kate.

“That sister,” she said. “The one you had before you came to Rosey Corner. You should go see her.”

“It’s been a long time, Birdie. I figure she’s forgotten all about me. And it’s better that way.”

“She wouldn’t forget you. She probably wonders about you all the time, no matter how many years it’s been.” Birdie paused a moment before she pushed out her next words all
in a rush. “I wonder about my brother. Not you. But the brother in my first family.”

“Yeah, you told me about him once. He was a couple years older than you, wasn’t he?”

“He’d be sixteen now. Old enough to drive.”

Jay quit trying to steer her away from whatever she wanted to say. Instead he reached for it. “What was his name? Do you remember?”

“How could I forget my brother’s name?” Birdie sounded a little incensed at his question.

“Hey, I’m sorry.” Jay lifted his hands off the wheel in a quick gesture of surrender. “I was just asking.”

“Kenton. Kenton Birdsong.”

“Could he sing like you?”

“Maybe. We sang in the car before he got sick.” Birdie sighed. “I can’t remember his face. All I can remember is him being so sick and not waking up when I had to get out and not go on with them.”

“That must have been tough.”

“Mommy said she’d come back for me, but I don’t think she will now.” Birdie fiddled with the clasp on the purse in her lap. “I think I’ll have to go find her.”

“Not by yourself,” Jay said quickly. “At least until you get out of school.”

“Right. That’s what Mama says too. It’s sort of weird asking Mama about finding my mother. Since Mama is my mother now.”

“And she loves you. We all love you.”

“My mother before loved me too. And so did Kenton.”

Jay noticed she didn’t mention her father, so he didn’t either. “I’m sure they did.”

“Kate said she’d help me find them. Someday.”

“How was she going to do that?”

“I don’t know.” Birdie sighed again and clicked her purse open and shut a few times. “I thought maybe she’d told you.”

“Things have been a little hectic lately.”

“Right. With the baby and all. My mama was expecting too. So that might mean I have another brother too. Or a sister.”

“I guess so.”

“Kate’s worried I’ll leave Rosey Corner if my mother hears me on the radio and remembers she promised to come back for me.”

“Oh.” Jay didn’t like to think about Birdie being gone from Rosey Corner any more than Kate did. “Would you?”

Birdie raised her head, but she didn’t look at Jay. Instead she stared out the windshield. They were almost to her house. “Not forever. I’d always come home to Rosey Corner.”

“It’s a good place to call home.” Jay pulled in the driveway. The porch light was on and through the window he could see Kate’s mother and father in the sitting room, waiting for Lorena to get home.

She gave him a hug, then was out of the car, running for the steps. Scout raced out to greet her and she laughed as she danced away from him to keep the dog from messing up her Sunday dress.

He waited until she was inside before he backed up and headed home. Kate had left a light on for him, but she was already in bed. Before he turned out the light, he stood a moment and watched her sleeping. He could barely keep from touching her face, but he didn’t want to wake her. She’d been so tired that day. Because she was carrying his baby. His
heart swelled inside his chest. He loved her so much, and he would love their baby.

She woke when he crawled into bed and turned into his embrace, murmuring a hello. Yes, indeed. Rosey Corner was a good place to call home.

25

C
lay Weber didn’t have a good start to his Monday. His shoestring broke when he laced up his shoes. The bossy cow kicked over a half full pail of milk and then swished her tail in his face. Twice. When he got corn for the hogs, the mice were having a party in the corncrib. He’d have to find a black snake to put a stop to that nonsense before nothing was left but cobs.

At breakfast, he snapped at Mary when she asked if he’d given the doll dress to Victoria. Big tears welled up in Mary’s eyes. He was sorry at once and hugged the little girl, but that didn’t make it all right. Mary had nothing to do with Victoria telling him to go away.

His mother shooed the girls off to get their schoolbooks. Aaron blew the horn on the old jalopy Clay had helped him buy. He wanted his brothers and sisters to have a way to school. Aaron would graduate this year, the first high school graduate in the family. Clay would have been the first if things had been different, but they weren’t. They were what they were, and he’d never have that rolled-up piece of paper that
was the ticket to a better life. Instead he’d keep wrestling a living out of the ground for his mother and the kids.

Maybe that was why Victoria told him to go away. He wasn’t smart enough for her.

He stared down at his eggs and bacon and biscuit smeared with blackberry jam. All products of his or his mother’s hands. Thankful, that’s what he should be. He had a good family. A farm to work. Enough schooling to get by. He tried to push thankful to the front of his thinking, but it didn’t work. Grouchy was what he was. Not a bit thankful.

He moved his eggs around with his fork as he listened to Aaron’s car going down the lane. The boy needed to patch that muffler.

His mother came back in the kitchen and told Willie to stop playing with his food and eat. She looked ready to tell Clay the same, but instead she poured a cup of coffee and sat down across from him. “Something bothering you, son?”

“No, ma’am. Just didn’t sleep so well.”

“I see.” She took a sip of coffee and gave Willie another look that at last got the little boy to spoon some oatmeal into his mouth.

Willie was a dreamer. Being the last and a child who never laid eyes on his father had made them all spoil him too much. Maybe Clay should talk to his mother about giving the boy some regular chores. At five, he could feed the chickens or gather sticks for kindling.

Willie would be easier to talk about than Victoria. Her words telling him to go away had sounded in his head over and over the night before. Then when he did drift off to sleep, he dreamed she was looking at him with longing eyes. That was a dream he might have wanted to keep on dreaming,
but something jerked him awake. Reality, he supposed. He lay there in bed and stared up at the dark, trying to replace Victoria’s face in his dream with Paulette’s. Paulette was the one looking at him with longing. Not Victoria. That was what would make sense, and hadn’t everybody always said that Clay had good sense?

He looked at things straight on. Wasn’t much use imagining things were different than they were. The ground on their rocky farm was so hard a man could spill blood on it and still not grow a decent potato. But even more than the farm, he knew the man who stared back at him from the mirror every morning was only a farm boy without much to offer any girl except a lifetime of work like his mother had.

It didn’t much matter that his mother claimed she would never have chosen a different path than marrying his father. That didn’t have anything to do with the choices Victoria was ready to make. He was lucky to have any girl wanting him to come around. So he should be glad Paulette was ready to grab his arm and sit with him at church on Sunday.

He hadn’t wanted to go to church, but he couldn’t come up with a reasonable excuse to stay home. Besides, he had nursed this tiny hope Victoria might take back her words. After all, for a while there on the pond bank, she’d almost seemed glad he was there. He’d even had his arms around her for a few seconds when she stumbled toward the water’s edge.

All the way to church, he thought up what he could say to her.
Victoria, I know what you said, but we’ve been friends a long time. We don’t want
to throw that away. Can’t we just keep talking
now and again? Won’t you let me hang on
to a shred of hope?

But he didn’t get a chance to say any of that. Paulette
captured him as soon as he set foot on the front walk. He did see Victoria come in the church, but he could hardly get up from beside Paulette and go talk to her then. Even if that was what he wanted to do. The very sight of her pulled at him. He’d have gone down on his knees right there in front of the whole church and begged her to change her mind about him if he thought that would make a difference. But he figured a scene like that would make her even more eager for him to disappear from her life.

He did speak to her after the services, but she kept her eyes down, barely looking at him or at Paulette either before she eased away from them. Minutes later, she grabbed Samantha and headed down the road toward her house, even though her parents were still talking in the churchyard. If only he’d had a reason to walk with her. If only Paulette hadn’t been hanging on to his arm, chattering about the movie they’d seen.

“The fishing trip didn’t go well then?” his mother asked now.

“The fish weren’t biting.” Clay finished off his eggs even though they were cold and about as appetizing as Willie’s oatmeal. He hoped she’d see him chewing and let it drop. They both knew she wasn’t talking about catching fish anyway.

“Maybe you should give it another try,” his mother said.

His mother had aged a lot in the last five years. Hard years after Clay’s father died. She and his father had been like two halves of the same person. A softer, gentler side and a harsh, honest side. Mother and father. Now she had to be both sides and it was wearing on her. Deep lines traced around her eyes. She was always working. In fact, it was uncommon for her to sit like this with her coffee. Generally she just took a sip now and again while starting in on her chores.

But today she studied him across the table, her hands wrapped around her cup. Willie scraped the last bite out of his bowl, gave their mother a smile, and headed outside to check on the kittens under the porch.

“Maybe you should give him some chores to do,” Clay said.

His mother’s face softened as the little boy ran past the kitchen window. “Let him play. He’ll have plenty of time for working later.”

“You’re babying him too much.” Even to his ears, he sounded grouchy again.

She reached across the table and laid a work roughened hand over his. “He helps me in the garden.”

“That’s play for him.”

“Working in the dirt isn’t a bad thing to enjoy, son. You liked the planting when you were his age too.” Her eyes on him were concerned. “I’m sorry we couldn’t baby you longer.”

“I never wanted to be babied.”

“No, no you didn’t. Your father used to call you his little man. Do you remember that?”

Clay nodded, not sure he could trust his voice with that memory pushing at him. He’d followed his father out to the fields when he was younger than Willie.

His mother patted his hand and sat back. She took another drink of coffee. “I saw you sitting with Paulette yesterday at church. You two back together?”

“Maybe.”

“She seemed all smiles,” his mother said mildly.

“Yeah. She was at the movies with some friends Saturday night and she asked me to sit with them.”

“I see.” His mother ran her finger around the rim of her cup.

Clay wanted to get up and go on out to hitch the horse to the plow, but his mother wasn’t sitting at the table for no reason. She had something to say and she hadn’t said it yet. While he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear it, she was his mother. He owed her a listen, even as he hoped she’d have second thoughts and get up to go about her work and let him go about his.

That wasn’t to be. “I’m guessing Victoria wasn’t one of those friends.”

“No.” Clay drained the last of his coffee from his cup. Anything to keep his eyes away from his mother. She had enough troubles without taking on his heartache. And that was what he had. Words weren’t going to make it better. Time maybe, or so people said. Time hadn’t seemed to make Victoria’s heart stop hurting for Sammy.

Clay pushed back from the table and stood up. Whatever she wanted to say would have to wait for another time. “I’ve got to get that back field plowed before the rain comes.”

She caught his arm as he moved past her. He had to stop, but he kept his eyes on the door.