Softly and Tenderly (33 page)

Jade leaned back. “You would do that to him?”

“I’m not losing my son, Jade. Now that I have him, I’m not losing him. After all I’ve put us through, I’d be a fool to not fight for him.” Max rested his arms on the table, his coffee cradled between his hands. Jade liked his hands. Thick, confident, tender. “The threat may have been part bluff on our part, but it worked. Gus’s lawyer called the next day to drop the suit.”

Just what went down in Whisper Hollow’s hills? “So he’s an accessory to murder?”

“I don’t know, but he didn’t want anyone investigating.”

Behind her, a table squeaked. Footsteps echoed on the hardwood. Jade glanced back. Dustin was watching. He raised his hand. “See you.”

“See you.”

“Jade.” Max grabbed her arm. “Look me in the eye.”

She swerved around. “Keep your voice down.”

“Listen to me. I’m not going anywhere. You want to run off with Dustin Colter? Do it, but I’ll come after you.”

“Interesting. He told me he’d be waiting for me.”

“Jade, while I’m in rehab, anything could happen. But I’m going to be one lonely, praying, face-to-the-ground man before Jesus. I want what’s best for both of us, and I believe”—he thumped his chest—“we belong together.”

“I don’t get this. What is driving you? The Outpost? Why are you suddenly getting your act together? Who’s going to take care of Asa? Run Benson Law if your dad goes to the state supreme court?”

“Dad’s turning over the firm to Clarence Chambers.”

“No . . . I don’t believe you.” Would he? Rebel was coldhearted.

“Call him. Ask.” Max tossed his phone to the table. “He said between the lawsuit, being a new father, the pill battle, and you running out . . .”

“I didn’t run out.” Jade sighed over the palette of her husband’s life.

“He didn’t think I’d have my head in the game. So I went out and proved he was right. Got mad, popped pills with a bourbon chaser, passed out in the den, and woke up to Asa screaming with his leg caught in the crib.” Max demonstrated by twisting his arm back and around. Jade winced. “When I stumbled in to see what was wrong, he was wailing, in pain, naked, and covered with poop.”

Jade eyed him. So he brought his brand of hurt to his own son. Maybe it was a blessing to be barren.

“I called Tripp and said, ‘Let’s go hard core.’ I leave on Monday.” Sticks appeared at the end of the table and freshened Max’s coffee without asking. He took a big hot gulp, wincing. “I need to ask you something, Jade.”

“Oh, Max.” She denied him with a slow shake of her head. “Don’t.”

“Will you take Asa for me while I’m gone?”

“I said don’t. Max, this is not fair, and you know it. What about your mom?”

“All is fair in love, Jade. I’m pulling a cheap trick in my fight for you. I saw your face when Asa touched your cheek.”

“You can’t manipulate me. I won’t allow it.”

“No manipulation, Jade. All my heart and my motives are on the table. Yes, I want you back, and if you spend four months with Asa, you’ll fall in love with him. And maybe find it in your heart to forgive me. Want to be with me.”

“I forgive you, Max. I do. I just don’t trust you.”

“Fair enough. But let me earn it back. Give me a chance. But either way, I need you to keep Asa.”

“No, you don’t. Your mom can keep him. Or the McClures.”

He furrowed his brow, making a face.

“Okay, but your mom can keep him for four months. I’m sure you’ve hired a nanny.” Jade slid out of the booth.

“But I want you to do it.”

“How can you do this to him? To me? Force us to bond when you and I are not even sure we’ll be together in four months? Max, it’s always about you. Don’t you care at all about anyone else?”

He was next to her, gripping her hands. “You are all I care about, Jade.”

“Then how come it never feels like it?” Jade’s cell rang from her hip pocket. She read the screen and peered up at Max. “It’s your mom.”

She listened for a second and turned for the door. “We’re on our way.”

Twenty-six

Jade stirred awake, her elbows slipping from the bent wood arms of the rocking chair. Two a.m. The golden glow from the small lamp on the edge of the dresser was the only light in the room.

Other than Mama’s eyes. “You . . .”—she gasped for a breath—“ . . . dozing.”

“No, no.” Jade shivered and crawled on the bed, curling up next to Mama. “Just taking a break from seeing.” She checked the cannula hose running around Mama’s ears and into her nose. “How are you?”

Dr. Meadows had come around eleven. He was one of the good ones. “Her system is shutting down,” he said in a hushed tone, his sympathy going from Willow to Aiden, to June, to Max. Finally falling on Jade. “It won’t be long. Keep her warm and comfortable.”

On Mama’s nightstand, he’d left a bottle of Ativan and another of morphine liquid in case air hunger caused her to panic.

“Some . . . party . . .” Mama struggled to breathe between each word. Even connected to the oxygen, her effort was laborious.

“Sure was, and you took our breath away, gorgeous.” Jade attempted a smile.

Mama exhaled what might have been a laugh, but the rattle in her chest caught her wind making her choke and cough. Jade brought her upright, rubbing her back, coaxing, “Breathe with me, Mama. Inhale . . . good. Exhale. You shouldn’t have stayed outside so long.”

“Oh, Jade-o . . . my farewell . . . party.” Mama held on to Jade’s hand as she eased her back onto the pillow. “My farewell . . .”

“No talk of dying now, young lady.” Jade fluffed the pillow behind Mama’s head, wincing, nearly panicking herself as Mama struggled to breathe. Carbon dioxide, Dr. Meadow said, would build up and Mama wouldn’t be able to expel it fast enough. “What will I do without you, Mama?”

Mama’s smiled softly. “My Jade-o . . . capable, tender, kind. So proud, baby. So proud.” Her forefinger lifted ever so slightly and pointed at Jade. “What you . . . became . . . did . . . without me.”

A stream trickled down Jade’s cheek. “You can’t go, Mama, you can’t. I need you.”

“You
needed
me. Those days . . . gone by . . .” She faded, and for almost an eternity, didn’t inhale.

“Mama?” Jade shook her into gasping for air. “Breathe. Keep breathing.”

“So . . . tired.” A deep, rattling cough exploded in her chest. Mama gasped and gagged, panic filling her eyes as her hands grasped the air.

“Okay, okay, here, Mama.” Jade drew her upright again, making sure the cannula was in place. But the carbon dioxide was winning. “Breathe with me, Mama. In. Out. In. Out.” Jade eyed the drugs on the nightstand.

The coughing-gasp subsided and Mama shivered, lowering back down to the plumped pillows.

“Hey, Mama, remember how you used to sit up with Aiden, Willow, and me on fall nights and tell us about traveling with Carlisle and the carnival? You told us stories of the trapeze artist and the runaway lion. Of the bulimic fat lady?”

Mama closed her eyes with a long sigh. “Circus . . . freaks . . . home.” The end of her lips quivered as if she wanted to smile.

Jade brushed her hand over Mama’s cheek. Her skin was so dry and sallow. “Everyone needs a place to call home.”

“He’s here,” Mama said with a crisp clarity, her glistening eyes fixed on the window.

“Who’s here, Mama?”

“Jesus . . . on His donkey.”

“He’s visiting again?” Jade tucked the blanket tighter around Mama’s narrow frame.

“No, not visiting. Oh, Jade-o.” She exhaled each word with a sense of wonder. Without gasping for air.

“Mama, do you believe?” Jade cupped Mama’s face in her hands and turned her head until their eyes met. “Is He your Savior? I need to know. Will you be with Him on the other side?”

“It’s . . . why.” Mama struggled for a full breath. “He’s come. But He waits.”

“What’s He waiting for, Mama?”

“You,” she whispered.

“Me?” Jade peered at the window as if she might see Jesus with her own eyes.
What do You want, Jesus?

“Let . . . me . . . go, Jade-o.” She exclaimed a sharp, “Oh! He looked . . . at me.”

“I can’t.” Buckets of tears filled Jade’s eyes. “I can’t let go. I’m scared.”

Mama’s chest slowly expanded, rattling and gurgling, then contracted. “I’m ready . . . peace.”

Mama reached for the cannula, her hand shaking, tugging it free. Jade’s tears dripped onto her hand. Mama’s fingers shook and got tangled in the tube.

“Here, Mama, let me.” Jade unhooked the hoses and turned off the tank. The silence echoed in Jade’s ears. “Do you want the drugs Dr. Meadows left?”

“I want to enter . . . drug free.” Her tender smile quickly faded.

“Even in death, you’re doing it your way, aren’t you?” Jade brushed Mama’s cheeks with a kiss. Shaking, Mama puckered her lips. Jade’s eyes filled as she lowered her lips to Mama’s.

“I love you.”

Mama tapped her chest. “Me too. Jade-o . . .” She coughed, working to draw air. “Max . . . it’ll be . . .”

“Don’t worry about Max and me.” Jade dried her cheeks with her sleeve, then nestled next to her mother, tucking her arm under her shoulders. “We’ll breathe together. In . . . good. Out.”

“Sing . . .”

“Sing?” Sing what? No song came to mind, only fragments of melodies from the old tunes played at the party.

“A hymn.”

A hymn? Jade scrambled for a hymn. Why couldn’t she think of one? No words came. A hymn for the hippie . . .

Then she heard Granny’s clear contralto.
Come home, come home, ye who
are weary .
. .

Jade cleared the emotion from her throat. “Softly and tenderly, Jesus is calling . . .” She breathed in, breathed out with Mama. “Calling for you and for me . . . Breathe in, Mama. Out. Come home, come home . . . all who are weary come home . . .”

Jade breathed out with Mama. A serenity fell on her face. “Softly and tenderly, Jesus is calling . . .” Jade watched Mama.
Inhale, Mama, come on
. “Come home, come home . . .”

“Mama?” Jade squeezed her shoulder. “Mama, breathe in. Mama. Ye who are weary come home . . .”
Mama?

She’d breathed her last. “Oh, Mama, Mama.” Jade collapsed against her warm but still body, weeping, gathering the soft material of her gown in her hands.

Softly and tenderly, Jesus was calling.

God had painted cotton ball clouds across the cyan sky and set the day’s thermostat to a warm and balmy sixty-two degrees. A perfect day for saying goodbye, for lowering Mama into the cold, dark earth.

Jade stood on the pale-green grass carpeting the burial mound that snaked around the old homestead with her back to the mourners gathering in the house, on the porch, in the yard.

The indistinguishable hum of voices married with the song of the wind floated toward her from the barn where a team was setting up tables. Willow wanted to celebrate Mama’s passing with a barbecue. “That’s what she would’ve wanted.”

Jade inhaled the heady fragrance of roasting meat along with the warm, moist soil of Tank Victor’s field.

For a moment she was eight, maybe nine, watching one of Mama’s parties from her bedroom window, canvas tents pitched all over the yard, the green hose stretched through the grass for the makeshift shower. She ached to watch those parties again.

But the parties would be no more. Mama was gone. Jade’s past was buried with her. She wrapped her arms around her waist, fighting the sense of loss that began swirling in her thoughts during the funeral.

“You doing all right?” Daphne and Margot appeared on either side of her. Daphne pressed Jade’s shoulder with her hand.

“Yeah, just thinking.” Jade shook her head and twisted Mama’s jade ring around her pinky finger. “I wasn’t a good daughter.”

“Don’t go there, Jade. You’re mourning, not rehashing the past. It’s over, book closed. You can’t change anything back there.”

If Daphne meant to comfort her, she missed.

“Come on, if you’re being honest, go all the way. Your mom wasn’t a stellar mom, remember?” Margot bent forward to see Jade’s face.

“Margot.” Daphne reached in front of Jade and shoved Margot aside. “You really shouldn’t be licensed to stick sharp, moving instruments in folks’ mouths. You have no compassion.”

“I’m sorry, but the truth and reality are compassionate.”

Jade shook her head. “I was just so mad at her for so long. I was the selfish one. So what if she married a few too many times? So what if she traveled for her job?”

“Traveled? Jade, she—”

“Margot.” Daphne’s interjection was piercing. “Jade, sweetie, none of us can see the past clearly. Good or bad. Be sad, be angry, cry, grieve, remember all the great things about your mom. And then, look to the future.”

“My thoughts are stuck on how horribly I treated her. When I was packing to go to UT, she wanted to help. What’d I do? I ignored her, talked on the phone to my friends, who aren’t even here today, and yelled at her because she had the nerve to
fold
my wadded-up tops.”

“That was after the abortion, Jade. You were hurting.” Daphne kept her voice even but firm.

“Right, but did I tell her I was mad? No, I just
showed
her. Acted like a two-year-old. Was I there for her when Bob Hill divorced her? When she got diagnosed with leukemia? She went through eight years of illness. Alone. A-lone!” The tears stung again in her tired eyes.