Page 16 of Lightning in a Mason Jar
Except the nerves ran deeper. Because her own past was still dogging her today with memories she’d pushed to the far corners of her mind. She hadn’t even bothered arguing with Martin about going on her own. She wasn’t a fool.
Some of her mother’s boyfriends had been better than others. Like Darren, who brought different board games for them all to play together. And George, who planned picnics with fast food at the park.
But the others? She didn’t even want to think of their names. The ones who threw furniture, fists, and words that had the power to break her mother as much as the violence. She could still hear the shouts that echoed even with her hands over ears while she hid under a table, in a closet, or on a perch in a tree.
Clutching one of Winnie’s old canvas bags in her lap, Bailey Rae traced the stitching with one finger. Had she shied away from helping Gia initially because of those memories? Unwilling to get involved in a spiral of hurt she understood all too well? Not much of a tribute to all that Aunt Winnie had done for her.
Even now, she could almost hear her aunt’s voice nudging her to mind her manners. “Hey, uh, Martin? Thank you for coming to tell me about Gia, and for driving me over to see her. I’m sorry if I came off a bit ... brusque back at the cabin.”
“No need to thank me,” he said with a quick dip of his beard-stubbled chin. “I’ll rest better knowing you’re not out there running around half-cocked, putting yourself in danger.”
“I retract my apology.”
He half smiled, staying silent as the pickup powered along the two-lane county road, lined with dense pines, trunks skinny as they crowded each other reaching for sunlight.
Hugging the bag tighter, she looked around the truck cab, never very comfortable with lengthy silences. The unknown rarely boded well. She turned up the radio just as a Chris Stapleton tune blended into a Kane Brown number.
She tapped her toe in time until finally she couldn’t stand the silence between them any longer. She turned down the radio. “I know this bag may seem kind of silly to you. But when I was a kid, something like this would have meant the world. My mom was in a similar situation to Gia’s, except because my mother was an addict, it kept happening.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said with genuine sympathy.
“It’s how I ended up with Aunt Winnie. She’s not my biological relative. She just helped my mom out a few times, and somehow I ended up sticking around.”
“Where’s your mother now?” he asked, easing off the gas as a cow crossed the road, taking its sweet time while the rest of the herd bellowed from the pasture.
“She’s dead.” Her gut knotted with the familiar mix of sadness and anger. “About eighteen months after the last time she dropped me off. She was addicted to drugs, alcohol, and men.”
“I didn’t know that about your past. That’s rough.”
Grieving the loss of someone who’d already disappeared had been strange, and she hadn’t been adept at regulating her emotions in thosedays. She hadn’t cried like expected—instead she’d raged at the simplest of perceived injustices. Like taking her plate to the sink. Extra homework. A cross word from the Watson twins.
Until one day, while canning squash, Winnie talked about missing her own parents. She’d shared a simple memory of being mad at her father over where to go to school and how difficult it had been to forgive him, even though she loved him. Winnie had never spoken much about her past before that, so the impact hit hard. Her own memories—the good ones—had bubbled to the surface that day, allowing her to begin grieving her mom.
“I’m not looking for sympathy, Martin.” Then or now. “Just relaying facts. I don’t know how much you’ve heard about my aunt, but she helped a lot of women and kids over the years, people who were down on their luck.”
“I’ve heard some stories. No doubt, her passing left a hole in the community.”
Her gaze tracked the four-rail fence alongside the road as they sped into the next town. “More than you can imagine. I remember this one time a mom and her two sons came to stay with us, food was disappearing, and Aunt Winnie couldn’t figure out where it was going.” She tapped the box of granola bars sticking out of the top of the canvas sack. “For the longest while, she thought it was me. She kept telling me that even if I’d taken the food, it would be okay.”
Bailey Rae shifted the canvas bag to the seat, wishing the knot in her gut could be as easily shuffled away. “Then when they left, we found all the food wrappers under the bunk beds—Pop-Tarts, crackers, granola bars. Aunt Winnie said kids who’ve been starved have food issues. I had a lot of struggles in those times I lived with my mom, and while we certainly didn’t have lots of money, I wasn’t starved.”
She pushed aside thoughts of the nights she’d gone to bed hungry. She didn’t want to think about what her mother may have done to provide what she did. The thought alone lent dimensions to her mom she hadn’t considered before. Had Yvonne been a prostitute as well asan addict who happened to provide for her kid? Or had providing for her kid pushed her into prostitution, leading her to addiction to cope?
Martin glanced over at her fast before returning his attention to the road. “Sounds like a lot for a kid. For an adult, even. That explains your tough exterior.”
Was that what he saw when he looked at her?
She almost asked him to expand on the idea, but that felt self-indulgent, or even compliment seeking. So instead, she touched a military patch of some sort Velcroed to the visor. “What’s the deal with this? Do you have a family member or friend in the service?”
Or a girlfriend?
He flipped the visor, hiding the patch. “I used to serve in the army, as an MP—military police.”
“And now you’re a conservation officer? Why not a cop? Seems like a more logical transition.”
“I like the peace out here.”
“That’s it?” After all she’d shared? “There are plenty of other careers that offer silence—with fewer mosquito bites.”
