Jon stared at him for several seconds before he asked, “Why didn’t you ever have the guts to ask, bro? Because she’s practically your sister? Or because she has darker skin pigmentation than you? Afraid folks would think the rich white boy was dating the help?”
Taken aback by the question, Brad visibly flinched. “Seriously? You jump to bigot in front of all the other reasons I may have?”
“You’re saying her skin color, or your lack of skin color, had nothing to do with your hesitation back then?”
The question shocked him to his very heart. How could Jon even think the color of their skin had ever been a factor? It had honestly never even occurred to him. Not once. “Of course not.”
“Then what?”
It embarrassed him to say it out loud. “A few reasons. First of all, I didn’t want her to think I asked her out as a last resort. I didn’t want her to agree out of some sort of pity.”
Jon nodded and drank some more coffee before asking, “And number two?”
Heat that had nothing to do with the coffee he just swallowed flushed his face. He shrugged, almost defensively. “What if…?” His voice trailed off, as if he refused to voice his fear.
Jon, however, went ahead and said it out loud. “What if she turned you down? What if your feelings were one-sided after all? Better to pine from a distance for fifteen years than have all your hopes and dreams trampled under her little feet, eh?”
The spark of irritation he’d felt earlier at his brother slowly burned to anger. He grabbed his banana peel and his coffee cup and stood. “You know what? You’ve been a real jerk lately. Not sure what’s up with you. I came out here to try to talk to you. See if you needed me. But I’m not going to be a target just because you’re in one of your moods.”
He left without another word. Outside the humid pool house, the morning air felt cooler than before. Instead of going inside, he wandered along the path and found himself in the gazebo. So many memories that normally lay in the back of his mind had come forward in the days since Valerie returned. Memories and feelings. How much of the past had he projected onto the present? Did it even matter?
His coffee had long cooled, so he tossed it into some bushes and put the banana peel in the empty cup. Jon was just in a bad mood and pushing Brad’s buttons. Intellectually, he knew that. No one could do that better than Jon. Later today, he’d come to Brad with a hand outstretched and say something like, “Sorry, bro. Bad mood and took it out on you.” Brad would forgive him, because he ought to, and because he always did.
However, it didn’t make the hint of truth in his words affect him any less. He had pined from a distance to keep from discovering how Valerie felt. He’d stayed safe. He’d guarded his heart. Look where it got her. If he had only… but, no.
No matter what, he would not allow himself to shoulder the blame of what happened to her. She made choices. Tyrone was a bad man, a perfect storm of terribleness surrounded her. She got out, though. Finally safe. Home. Time to quit doing anything from a distance at all.
Pulling the phone out of his pocket, he checked the time. Six in the morning. He could probably go ahead and send a text. If she still slept, she’d sleep through an incoming text.
Dad is making tomato soup from buddy’s bounty. Lunch at the castle after church?
He slipped the phone back into his pocket and headed back to the house. As he walked, he felt the vibration of an incoming text.
Love your dad’s soup. See you around one.
He couldn’t stop the smile that covered his face.
Valerie settled more comfortably againstthe arm of the couch and cradled the cup of tea in her hands. She’d worn a simple, ankle-length dress the color of light coffee that she adjusted as she folded her legs under her. Alone for the first time in a couple hours, she took a moment to inspect the room around her. A painting of the three brothers playing in the sprinkler hung on the wall across from her. They must have been five. The artist had captured the summer heat, the cool water, the joy on the boys’ faces. She imagined that Rosaline could capture infinite memories just with a glance at it.
“Here we are,” Rosaline said, coming back into the room. She wore a tan skirt with a white shirt tucked into the waist and a thick black belt and a beaded black necklace. She’d piled her hair on top of her head, and Valerie could see the small gray roots among the frosted curls. She carried a pink gift bag that had white tissue paper covered in shiny pink polka-dots sticking out of the top of it. “I found this last year, cleaning out one of my cabinets. I put it away to save for you. I’m sorry it’s taken so long to get it to you.” She held out the bag. “We’ll call it a housewarming gift.”
Valerie straightened her legs, feeling the twinge in her hip, and set the cup on the little table next to the couch. Curiosity warred with almost childlike excitement as she reached for the gift. “Thank you,” she said. She took the bag from Rosaline and reached into the tissue paper, pulling out a framed photograph.
Immediately, emotion filled her chest and brought tears to her eyes. She and the boys must have been about thirteen. They’d gone to a wedding for someone at the church. The bride had taken a silly photo with the groomsmen, laying on her side across their arms. Valerie and the Dixon brothers had mocked it, lifting Valerie into their arms and holding her on her side while she posed with her head in her hands as if resting her elbow on the floor. They all could barely hold the pose, though, because they were laughing so hard. Brad, in the middle, did not look at the camera. He looked at her, and she could almost hear his laughter.
Buddy had bought her a dress special for the wedding; a bright, lime green one with spaghetti straps and eyelet lace on the hem. She’d felt bold and beautiful and more sophisticated than this picture revealed. The boys all had on summer suits, light blue, light tan, and light gray, with white shirts and matching ties.
“This is amazing,” Valerie said, running her fingertip over the black wood frame. “We were so young!”
“Doesn’t seem like that long ago to me,” Rosaline said. “That year was special. That year I saw my boys as men and you as the wonderful woman you are today.”
Valerie didn’t know what to say. “Thank you.”
“I’d forgotten all about that picture until I found it. Funny what memories get set to the background and how easy it is to bring them back.” Rosaline picked up her teacup and sat in the wingback chair across from her. “I set about cleaning out that cupboard and ended up bawling my way through boxes of pictures, remembering times when my house was full of the kind of joy only four kids can bring.”
One by one, doors in her mind opened in a domino effect. “You were a good mom,” Valerie said quietly.
“I loved being a mom. We didn’t think it would happen. We’d lost three before the boys. I stayed in bed for weeks with them. Talk about stir-crazy. And poor Phillip was working so hard. The company had just gotten off the ground and there was too much work and not enough immediate revenue to pay salaries for help, so he and your uncle were doing the brunt of it. I declare, if it weren’t for your mama, I think I would have gone insane.”
