Page 7 of Lightning in a Mason Jar
Libby extended a chapped hand, with a thin gold wedding band on her ring finger. “Nice to meet you. This little man is my son, Keith.”
She motioned to the young boy sitting cross-legged on the ground, leaning back against a towering bookshelf. With a pristine stuffed Winnie-the-Pooh doll in his lap, Keith lifted a View-Master to his face and clicked through the circle of images. A stack of extra photo disks rested on the floor beside him.
Would we ever learn each other’s names from before? Feel safe enough to trust each other with nuggets of our stories? I couldn’t answer that. But I sensed that over the years we would need each other whensomething triggered memories, bad ones. We would depend on each other to stay sane. Annette was smart that way, knowing how to build a support system to sustain this new life.
Going to a counselor was out of the question for obvious reasons, and quite frankly, I’d had enough of that at the hospital.
“Keith,” his mother called, and when he didn’t respond, she touched his shoulder. He flinched. “Keith? Say hello to Miss Winnie.”
He blinked fast, eyes wide and searching like someone waking up in the morning only to realize they’d forgotten where they were. Silently, he returned to his shiny red View-Master.
His mother smiled apologetically. “He’s just tired.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “Change is tough for everyone. I imagine it’s especially overwhelming for a child.”
My words worked no matter her past, while still protecting my own. I was learning a new language of sorts, speaking in code with benign-sounding phrases laden with undercurrents. The new teacher was this grandmotherly librarian who oversaw this portal full of words.
Had my grandmother ever been a part of changing someone’s life this way? Taking such a risk for someone else? If so, she’d never let on.
Could she have, though? My grandmother who’d played cards with me and made pimento cheese sandwiches with the crust cut off. Then, like a whisper meant for library ears only, I realized my grandmother and Annette would not have been allowed to attend the same schools in the segregated South.
The thought hurt. “Mrs. Davis, I don’t know how to thank you enough.”
“You can’t.” Annette shook her head and gripped the handle of the rolling cart. “You can only pay it forward.”
And we did.
Chapter Three
2025
Bailey Rae eyed the stack of cookbooks on the corner of her vendor table. Confused didn’t come close to describing this weird exchange. “Ma’am? You are?”
“My name is Gia.” The young mother swallowed hard, as if sharing even her name were some Herculean task. “Gia Abernathy. My daughter and I need a place to stay.Thisled me here.”
The woman’s words knocked around inside Bailey Rae’s head, jockeying for a place to land. Winnie’s cookbook had led her here? Maybe she just meant Winnie’s reputation for helping folks, even letting them pick out necessities from the overstocked barn. “There’s a bed-and-breakfast right up the road. Reasonably priced. A cute little swing set in back. And they serve the best pancake breakfast.”
“Not that kind of place.” Her face flushed red, her dark eyes darting. “I need, uh, like a shelter.”
“Oh, okay,” Bailey Rae said, sitting up straighter. “We don’t really have anything like that in Bent Oak, but I can ask around—”
“Butthiscookbook says ...” Her words dwindled off on three quick breaths, the shallow kind.
“Mrs. Abernathy, I want to help you, if I can. Truly, I do.” Seeing this mother and daughter sent her empathy into overdrive. She’d been in that little girl’s shoes.
Leaving a home with nothing but a backpack after her mother fell out with another man. Warnings to stay quiet so as not to upset Yvonne’s newest guy. And, in quiet times, sharing a sleeping bag in the back of the station wagon while Yvonne whispered reassurances that Bailey Rae would survive, just as she had as a kid. Not realizing that the real strength lay in breaking the cycle.
Thank heaven for Uncle Russell and Aunt Winnie, who’d taught her how to steer her life rather than be dragged along by the undertow of her mother’s generational trauma. Now, though, she felt adrift without an anchor ...
“I must have misunderstood.” Gia gripped the tattered cookbook, her voice soft, each word separated by another of those hitchy breaths.
Bailey Rae shook off the past and focused on this woman’s very present need. “I’m sorry if there’s been a misunderstanding. Maybe you’re looking for my aunt—Winnie Ballard?” Even saying her name out loud stirred the grief. “If so, I’m sorry, but my aunt passed away recently.”
Libby tapped her cane against Bailey Rae’s leg. “Loose lips sink ships.”
“Luckily, Mrs. Libby, I don’t know anything to be blabby about.”
Gia frowned in confusion. “Youraunt?”
