A Sinclair Homecoming (The Sinclairs of Alaska) (15 page)

Trace laughed but he knew there was truth to that joke, as well. “Good idea.” And then he clicked off.

Wade had meant what he said. Trace would make a very good father. But what kind of father would he be? A weekend father. The Disneyland dad. He hated that idea. He wanted to be there for homework, for baseball games, for dance recitals, whatever his child was involved in—he wanted to be there. But he didn’t want Elizabeth. He knew that with certainty.

Maybe she wasn’t really pregnant. Maybe she was just late and this was all a big mistake.

Please...don’t be pregnant.
That seemed a terrible thing to pray for but it was the truth, just the same.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

W
ADE
AND
HIS
siblings arrived at the hospital nearly simultaneously. They didn’t waste time on small talk because they knew what was coming and they wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible. When they walked into Jennelle’s hospital room her gaze narrowed with suspicion when she saw all three of her children.

“What’s this about?” she asked, looking to Wade for answers and ignoring Trace and Miranda. “Something tells me you’ve come bearing bad news. Let me guess—you’re putting me into a home. Is there a place where ungrateful children stow away their parents they no longer have a use for?”

“Stop being so dramatic. Nobody is putting you into a home. Mostly because no one would take you,” Miranda muttered. “If you could stop being so mean for about two seconds things would get a lot better, you know.”

Wade shot Miranda a look that said,
slow down, slugger,
and Miranda gave him a subtle nod to say she’d try. Of the three, Miranda had taken the brunt of their mother’s bad attitude, and he hated that. Wade came to stand by her bedside and tried a disarming smile. “How are you feeling today, Mama?”

Jennelle didn’t trust him any more than she trusted his siblings and that much was apparent. “You’re up to something. Something no good, I wager. What’s this about?” she asked, going straight to the point.

“Mama, there’s no need to draw lines. We’re all on your side, even if that’s hard to see right now,” he said. “Just try to remember that.”

Jennelle sniffed and looked away. “This is what a mother with a broken heart looks like. Get used to it. Now what do you want?”

Trace tried jumping in. “Mother, we have good news,” he said, breaking a charming grin that had always been his saving grace. “The hospital is going to release you tomorrow, which means you don’t have to choke down bland hospital food any longer. Lord knows you’ve done nothing but complain about it the entire time you’ve been here. Not that I blame you. That stuff looks pretty gross.”

“You mean I get to go home?” The hope in Jennelle’s voice made Wade wince. When no one rushed to correct her, she clasped her hands together with a smile. “Thank heavens. I’m so sick of this place I could scream. Lord knows my flowers are probably dead by now.”

Miranda shook her head. “Mom, your flowers are dead because it’s winter. Not because you haven’t been there to tend to them,” she said, shooting a quick glance at Wade for reinforcements. “And no, you can’t go home. You’re going to come home with me, Jeremiah and Talen. This will give you an opportunity to spend more time with your grandson. You’re
only
grandson.”

“Me, go home with you? I’d rather sleep outside.”

Oh, come on, Mama. Why do you have to make it so hard to be on your side?
No one had ever accused Jennelle Sinclair of being a pushover, that was for sure. Time to be the bad guy. “Mama, stop being so mean,” he admonished, trying to be gentle but firm. “Here are the facts—you can’t live on your own and Florence can’t take care of you any longer. Trace lives out in the middle of nowhere and Miranda lives in town. It makes logical sense that you will stay with her while we figure out an alternative.”

“And what I want means nothing? I just get to be tossed around like an old potato with no opinion as to where I land?”

Miranda bracketed her hips with her hands. “Yes, that’s right. You old potato. Don’t you get it? You brought this upon yourself. If you hadn’t ruined the house you could still live there. But no, you had to fill it with so much crap that it was condemned. This is no one’s fault but your own. Stop trying to blame every single person you come into contact with for your own problems, which coincidentally, are also now
our
problems because we have to take care of you. So stop being so ungrateful, you mean old bitty.”

“Miranda!” Wade shot his sister a look.
“Was that necessary?”
Miranda shrugged but her eyes glittered as if she was holding back tears. Whether they were tears of frustration or hurt, he wasn’t sure. They could’ve been a combination of both.

Jennelle gaped at Miranda’s outburst and her eyes watered, and Wade knew he had to smooth things between Miranda and their mother before World War III happened and they were all collateral damage. “Mama, this is a temporary arrangement,” he promised her. “And this is a great opportunity to spend some quality time with Talen. You’ve always said that you don’t get enough time with your grandson. Well, this is your golden opportunity.”

“Leave my grandson out of this. I won’t be bamboozled into accepting a false truth. Just come out and say what’s truly happening. Don’t try and pretty it up,” Jennelle quipped darkly. “I wasn’t born yesterday, and I can see right through your machinations.”

“Can’t you see that we’re trying to help you?” Trace begged in a tone that betrayed his frustration. “Throw us a bone, will you? We’re doing everything in our power to help you get back into your house. All we’re asking is for just a little bit of help on your end.”

Jennelle’s upper lip seamed to a tight, stubborn line before she said, “I’ve seen it before. First you’re tied to a bed, forced to drink pureed grilled cheese from a straw and the next, all your possessions are given to Goodwill and you’re left with nothing but the clothes on your back. I’ve seen it happen, though I never imagined it would happen to me.”

“What are you talking about? Who have you seen this happen to?” Trace asked, irritated. “No one is going to force you to drink a pureed cheese sandwich.”

“Gladys Monker,” Jennelle answered in a strident tone. “She broke her hip and then her family stuck her in a home. She died of a broken heart a year later.”

“She died of pneumonia and she had dementia,” Miranda corrected her, shaking her head. “Good try, though. Not to mention, Gladys was, like, a hundred years old and you said yourself, her family waited too long to intervene on her behalf.”

Jennelle glared at Miranda for daring to interject facts into her dramatic storytelling hour. She closed her eyes and shrugged. “You say pneumonia. I say broken heart. Her children betrayed her. Plain and simple. Same as me.”

“Mama,” Wade warned, causing Jennelle’s eyes to open warily. “You have to stop attacking people who are trying to help you. You had a heart attack. You have needs that Florence cannot help you with. Plus it’s not fair to your friend to have to take care of you when you have three kids who are trying their damnedest to help. Stop pushing away the very people who love you.
Please.
”

“I wish to speak to Wade alone,” she declared, her bottom lip trembling. Miranda and Trace made sounds of frustration but left the room. Once they were alone, Jennelle turned to Wade, beseeching his help. “You’re the only one who truly loves me, son. Those two people don’t care about me or my comfort. They’ll just throw me in a home as soon as your back’s turned. I guarantee it!”

Wade sighed, praying for patience. “Mama, that’s not true. I don’t know what happened to you. You used to be a little more levelheaded than this. Something’s gone wrong inside your head and your heart if you truly think that your children would do something like that to you. We love you and we’re worried.”

“Why is everyone so worried? I was doing just fine before everyone poked their noses where they didn’t belong.”

He wasn’t going to have the same argument with her. He didn’t have the energy. “The facts remain the same. Your house is condemned and you cannot move back until the cleaners have done their job. Dad is in jail and there’s no one else who can help. Pushing away the very people who are turning their lives upside down to help you is very rude.”

“I don’t need anyone’s help.”

“Really? Because from where I’m standing, I see a stubborn woman who would rather cut off her nose to spite her face because she’s so blinded by her own pride to see what’s right in front of her.”

His mother blinked back tears. “I never thought I’d see the day when you would turn on me, too, Wade.”

“I’m not turning on you,” he said, gentling his voice because he knew the truth was a bitter pill to swallow but it had to go down just the same. “But you raised me to be a straight shooter and always speak the truth, even if it wasn’t pretty. So I’m not going to lie to you just because it might be easier. Trace is paying for cleaners to come and clean the house in the hopes that we can salvage your home. But there’s a chance that we won’t be able to save that house.” He let that truth sink in because he really needed her to understand that there was no going back to the way it was before. “There’s a lot of interior damage caused by rot that might not be able to be fixed. I want you to know that. And on Friday when the cleaners come, you need to be there to see what’s happening and you need to be a part of the cleanup because this is your mess.”

He drew a deep breath to say what really needed to be said but definitely wouldn’t be appreciated. “And the fact of the matter is, Simone died a long time ago. We have to let her go. We can’t change the past no matter how much we would like to. No matter how we punish ourselves it won’t bring her back.”
Let her go.

Wasn’t that what he needed to do, too? Had he truly been punishing himself all these years with her memory? Was it true that the root of his insomnia had Simone’s name written all over it? His knee-jerk reaction was to deny the thought and push it away but if he could plainly see that his parents were suffering the effects of unmitigated grief, why couldn’t he see that in himself? “It doesn’t matter how many rooms you fill up with stuff or how many boxes of cereal you collect. She’s never going to come home
ever again.
Stop trying to replace Simone with inanimate objects. It’s not going to work.”

Jennelle clapped her hands over her ears as tears welled. “Stop! Stop saying these terrible things. I don’t want to hear it,” she cried, but Wade couldn’t stop. Not now. Things had gotten to a place where going forward was the only way to survive.

“Mama,” he said, gently pulling her hands away from her ears. “We all loved her and we all miss her but we have to move on. Because we’re still living. Remember that, Mama? Remember that you have
three
other children? This has to stop. Sometimes I don’t even know who you are when such mean and hateful things pour out of your mouth. It’s not you. You didn’t raise us to be petty and small, which is why I can’t reconcile what I see in the woman before me. And I’m sorry if what I have to say is harsh but I expect more from the strong woman who raised me and that’s just the way that it is.”

Jennelle’s lip trembled and a tear escaped to slide down her cheek. He felt bad for being harsh but damn it, it had to be said. For a long moment she remained silent until she said in a choked voice, “I don’t mean to hurt anyone. Sometimes things come out of my mouth before I can stop them and then I can’t take it back.”

“I know,” he said, wiping away the tear and fighting his own. “We need to work on that. Because you’ve been saying some really awful things to your own children. To Miranda, particularly. She’s trying so hard to help you and all you do is push her away. Lord help you, there will come a day when you will succeed in finally pushing her away for good. And then you won’t have any contact with your grandson or any other grandchildren that may come. Is that what you want?”

“She doesn’t let me see Talen anyway,” she retorted mournfully. “She prefers that Indian woman over me.”

“I don’t believe that but even if a tiny bit of that statement were true, maybe you should ask yourself why? Maybe Talen’s other grandmother doesn’t judge Miranda for every little thing that she does or doesn’t do. A person can only take so much before they break.”

Jennelle’s bottom lip trembled. “And what about all of you? You never visit, you don’t call...Wade, you haven’t been home in eight years. That’s a mighty fine glass house you’re sitting in. Why haven’t you come home? Not even once?”

He fell silent. He wouldn’t lie to his mother but he wasn’t quite ready to admit the truth aloud. “Mama, I’ve got some things to work out in my head, too. Simone’s death screwed with us all. Things just fell apart and I couldn’t face it. I’m sorry.” He could’ve come home. He chose not to. Simone’s ghost had kept him away and he was ashamed to admit it. He drew a deep breath and let it out, his insides shaking like the legs of a newborn fawn. “The thing is, we’ve got a long road to walk and it would go a lot more smoothly if we didn’t have to fight you every step.”

“You’re asking a lot of me,” Jennelle said, looking away. “My whole life has been destroyed and I’m not supposed to be upset about it?”

“No, I understand that things are not ideal but we’re trying to fix it. Can you trust us, just a little bit, to get you where you need to be?” Jennelle lifted one shoulder in a helpless gesture, as if she didn’t even know where to start, and Wade took that as a tiny step in the right direction. “How about this, Mama...consider this an opportunity to get to know Talen better and then it’s something positive rather than a negative,” he suggested. “Things are going to change in this family. They have to. Otherwise, we’re just delaying the inevitable. This family is going to implode and there’ll be nothing and no one around to pick up the pieces.”

Jennelle said nothing. Wade wasn’t fool enough to harbor hope that his mother had had an epiphany but he wasn’t above hoping for a little luck that the tide was finally turning their way. He’d meant what he’d said. He felt bad that Miranda had been bearing the brunt of their mother’s rage when they all should’ve been there to help her. But they’d all bailed. His father included.

Shame followed the private admission, and he knew the biggest piece of the puzzle was still missing. “I’m going to find a way to get Dad out of jail,” he announced, making up his mind. Jennelle looked very vulnerable and sad and he wondered how fragile his parents’ marriage was right now. “It isn’t right for Dad to hide out and expect everyone else to do the work when he should’ve been there for you.”

“It’s not your dad’s fault,” Jennelle said, surprising Wade with her defense of her husband. “He’s had a lot to deal with.”