I awoke with a jerk and sat up so quickly that it made me dizzy. Tears made wet circles when they dripped off my jaw onto my nightshirt. Until I came to my senses and figured out that I had been dreaming, grief like I had never known before filled my whole body. My heart still thumped so hard that my chest ached. I buried my face in a pillow and sobbed until I got the hiccups.
“This is too much responsibility. I need to go back to a lifestyle where I was not responsible for anyone but myself,” I whispered.
“Hey,” Rosie yelled at my door. “Wake up. Supper is ready and going on the table in ten minutes.”
“Surely not. I only fell asleep five minutes ago,” I whispered and glanced over at my phone to see 4:45 in big numbers and a couple of text messages.
“Be right there,” I shouted and threw back the covers.
I dressed in a pair of pajama bottoms and an oversized T-shirt and went straight to the bathroom. Not even splashing cold water on my face five times helped my red, swollen eyes. I finally gave up and patted my cheeks with a hand towel. I rationalized the dream by telling myself that it was simply showing me the mental pain that could possibly be involved if I chose to leave the Tumbleweed.
“She’s alive!” Scarlett said when I walked into the living area.
I forced a smile. “Barely, but I wouldn’t want to miss a meal like this, so thanks for waking me.”
“If you’d have slept any longer, you would have trouble sleeping tonight. You need a good night’s rest, because we have a big day tomorrow,” Rosie said. “Take a seat, and we’ll say grace.”
She bowed her head and said words. I was glad that no one was going to test me on Rosie’s short prayer. Whatever came out of her mouth didn’t register, because that crazy dream kept replaying on a continuous loop in my head.
“You’ve been crying,” Rosie said when she raised her head.
“I was there with Jackson in his dream this time,” I told her. “I saw it all in color.”
Scarlett laid a large piece of ham on her plate and then passed the platter to me. “I can’t imagine having a dream like that.”
“They will quit when you decide to stay at the Tumbleweed,” Rosie said.
“I really don’t want to talk about it anymore.” I put a piece of ham on my plate. “This is nice. We should do this more often.”
“We eat together at the café every day,” Rosie reminded me.
“But not family-style like this,” I argued. “When was the last time any of us sat down to a meal here at the trailer?”
Scarlett shrugged and frowned. “I can’t remember.”
Rosie sent a bowl of candied sweet potatoes over to Scarlett. “You go to church and dinner at Grady’s mama’s house every Sunday.”
“There’s over thirty people there, so his mama serves it buffet-style. And that’s not with just the three of us,” Scarlett said.
“How about you, Rosie?” I asked and took a bite of sweet potato.
“Christmas Day,” she answered. “I invited Ada Lou and Nancy to dinner at the café. We close the Tumbleweed on that one day of the year, and Scarlett was spending the day in Dell City. So us three ladies had a nice meal, and I served it up homestyle in the kitchen. How about you?”
“At Ada Lou’s today. The food was good, but we had to rush.” I didn’t tell them about practically hyperventilating every time Jackson’s leg brushed against mine under the table. “Before that, the last time would have been fourteen years ago. I had supper with Frank and his wife, Paula. That was the night I was given an ultimatum.”
“Which was?” Scarlett asked.
“To burn my lucky deck of cards, promise to never play poker again, and get my grades up to passing by the semester’s end,” I answered. “Strange thing was that I had already finished all the classes with my online courses, and I was bored to death having to repeat them.”
Rosie’s eyes bored into mine. “Or?”
“I asked the same one-word question. That’s when the lecture came about appreciating the fact that Frank had taken care of me. How he could have put me in foster care and still could if I didn’t quit playing cards. Then she said that she had put a roof over our heads and given me a stable environment. If I didn’t like it, I could leave. I chose the latter. And before today, that was the last homestyle meal I had.”
“Why would anyone you had spent so much time with let a woman run you off? Was he your uncle or stepdad or what?” Scarlett asked.
The air suddenly seemed almost too heavy to breathe. My chest tightened, and my hands clenched into fists. Admitting what he was, other than my poker mentor, was something I didn’t even do to myself. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. Finally, I inhaled deeply and let it out slowly.
“You don’t have to answer that,” Scarlett said.
