If I Had You Page 5

  “Tess, it’s like I just said. I am choosing to do what is right,” Nora said with a sudden, tremulous smile. “And I was wrong; I am not doing this to stand by your father. I’m choosing to stand on what’s right because it is what God wants me to do.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Tess zipped her jeans with trembling fingers. Well, of course they wouldn’t do it.

  Although the sick had subsided, her head felt like it was going to detonate. She tugged her white tank top over her head and worked it down around her middle. When she smoothed the shirt over her stomach, her hands paused a beat there, feeling the blood pulse in her fingers, the warmth of her own skin. She had to try hard to imagine anything besides herself being there. Cootie’s baby, beneath her own flesh.

  Down the hallway, the sewing machine had started surging again. Tess knew perfectly well what that meant. Her mother used the sewing machine to hide behind. When her mother didn’t want more discussion, she shut the study door behind her, snapped down the presser foot, and let the thread fly.

  Tess had watched her mother stitch her way through enough craft-bazaar orange dog bandanas to festoon every hunting dog in Gilford County, a quilt to be auctioned for a new lighted bike path across Texoma Road, and seven fleece jackets for elderly friends who complained that someone kept the air conditioner too cold in the senior center.

  Tess peered both directions in the hallway, wanting to avoid her father.

  I never needed them anyway.

  Satisfied that she wouldn’t be seen, Tess pitched the few items she’d brought with her into her duffel bag. She zipped the bag and velcroed both handles together in one determined motion. Only then did she stop and peer out the window for a moment, as if something she could see there would give her guidance. A fly’s wings beat a sharp sizzle against the glass. The limb of the maple tree stretched toward her like a partner beckoning her to dance.

  Her mother probably kept her jewelry in the dresser.

  Tess checked the hallway again. The coast was still clear. Maybe there wasn’t anything worth pawning in her mother’s collection. Or maybe there was. She walked to her parents’ room and soundlessly slid open her mother’s top drawer.

  It was all here, everything she remembered, in a dusty red velvet tray that smelled of Estée Lauder Youth Dew and powder. Tess did not rifle through the tray like someone who had never seen these pieces before. Instead she lifted one gold-link chain with ginger fingers and examined the three items beneath it—a brooch with blue stones, a pair of pearl earrings, her mother’s diamond Hamilton watch.

  Tess remembered stories about the watch. Her dad had given it to her mother in the hospital the day Tess had been born. It must be worth something. Her mom didn’t wear it often because she was afraid she might lose it.

  Tess shoved the watch into her pocket. She thought a minute before she pocketed the pearl earrings and the neckace, too. Then she returned to the room where she’d been sleeping and made her final plan. Her parents’ car keys would be hanging on the brass hanger beside the cupboard.

  Oh, she knew her father well enough! He wouldn’t like to report to the Butlers Bend law that his daughter had stolen his car. She’d have plenty of time to ditch the Lumina before he ever phoned the police.

  Leaving her bed unmade, Tess thrust the jewelry inside her bag. The sewing machine ebbed for a moment and she straightened with fear. Out the window toward the side yard, she heard her father comparing lawn fertilizer with Claude Simms. In the other room, her mother began stitching again. Tess shouldered her bag, strolled with purpose toward the family room, and swiped the keys.

  The heat burned her cheeks when she stepped into the sun. Though she tried to go silently, her sandals slapped the pavement. One step. Two. Three. She wouldn’t look back, and she wouldn’t look forward. She unlocked the Lumina and pitched in her bag. She meant to put the car in gear but started the windshield wipers instead. While she fumbled to find the gearshift, she glanced at the door, expecting to see her mother come running out, trying to stop her.

  But her mother didn’t do any such thing. The black rectangle of porch stood empty, a gaping wound. As Tess eased the car out of the driveway, her arms leaden from the irreversibility of her action, a ragged breath burst from her chest.

  I’ll pawn this stuff and pay for my own abortion.

  I’ll get myself a line in Dallas, and everything will be okay.

  She swiped her face with the back of her hand and realized she was crying. She didn’t accelerate until she passed the third driveway down the street.

  WHEN A PERSON is in an empty house, the air settles. Quiet seeps in and the house sings a familiar noise. Nora glanced up from sewing the zigzag hem, listened for a moment, and knew she was alone.

  “Tess?” Nora could hear the refrigerator humming. The clock beside the study door ticked evenly, the second hand springing forward with each new beat. “Ben?”

  Nora heard a door slam. The blue denim she’d been working on pooled on the floor when Nora stood to check the window. If Ben was going off somewhere, he hadn’t told her.

  Light flashed across the front seat as someone reached for the gearshift handle. She yanked off her sewing glasses, which she always used for close work. Nora recognized her daughter’s silhouette in the car.

  Tess.

  Nora raced to the guestroom and threw open the door to make sure. She took stock of the empty room, the bed linens in a heap, the indentation on the chair where Tess’s bag had been. Even though she already knew, she shoved the tumble of sheets aside and found the bed empty.

  “Tess, wait!” Nora headed toward the front of the house. “Don’t—”

  Nora had gotten as far as the entryway and had grabbed the door handle before something stopped her. She stood alone, her chest heaving, not knowing whether to feel relief or despair. She had been getting used to the idea that Tess might stay.

  This is what I wanted, isn’t it? For everything to go away?

  As pebbles crackled beneath tires and the Lumina left the driveway, Nora called out, “Ben, Tess is stealing the car!” In spite of the Texas heat, the glass window where she laid her forehead felt like ice. She wouldn’t go after her daughter.

  I’m a failure as a mother, Lord. I’m so tired.

  TESS DIDN’T CAST a backward glance as she drove away. She kept her eyes forward, did not notice the yeasty sweet smell when she passed Congdon’s Bakery or the late-afternoon laughter and splashes coming from the turquoise-tiled city pool. She kept her eye on the road, one hand on the steering wheel, the other tap-tap-tapping her jeans with nerves.

  The white dashes on Texoma Road came at her in succession. When the car rounded the curve that had become the town’s namesake, she was driving fast. Three gold caution lights loomed in the front windshield.

  Tess accelerated into the turn, letting the sensation of speed drown out her frustration. Only she hadn’t counted on these stones in the road. She felt the car lose traction on the gravel and, as she stepped on the brakes, she already knew she’d made the wrong choice. In slow motion, the car veered and began to skid.

  It was odd how the loose coins in the front console went flying, the CD holder fell off the visor, the glove compartment gaped open, and all Tess could hear was silence. The seatbelt cinched her belly as she slammed forward. The Lumina fishtailed into the oncoming lane and then spun off the edge of the shoulder. Dust billowed in a blinding cloud as the car jerked to a stop.

  Tess scrubbed grit from her eyes with the back of a shaking fist. She had almost lost it. Now that was a stupid thing to do.

  She had to drive off like nothing had happened. That was the only way to keep someone from pulling off to check if she’d been hurt. She reversed and steered the dusty Chevrolet onto the blacktop again. In frustration, she threw a little more tire dust. Good-bye, Butlers Bend! Good-bye to everything.

  But by the time she’d made it through one stoplight and had almost run the second, she realized her hands were still tr
embling. She couldn’t focus on Texoma Road. The skid had frightened her more than she’d thought it had.

  Tess turned into the first available driveway and found herself in the parking lot of the Gilford County Library. She let the engine idle and took deep breaths, trying to compose herself.

  In the broad lawn that skirted the building, an eighty-year-old windmill turned in the wind, the last vestiges of Miles Butler’s cattle land that had long since been deeded to the county. Each time the blades made their rattling circle, water arced into a trough that had been transformed into the community fountain. A carved granite stone at the base of the windmill declared, “A great part of the information I have was acquired by looking something up and finding something else along the way.”—Franklin P. Adams.

  Tess had planned to stop only until her nerves settled and her wave of nausea subsided. She couldn’t leave the engine running. She needed every iota of the fuel in the tank to get to Dallas. But the car became an oven the minute she turned off the engine. The library would be cool and quiet; she wouldn’t stay long. Tess held the stolen keys between two fingers for an instant before she tucked them inside her pocket and hopped out. For a moment she wavered, weak in the heat. She held onto the side of the car and steadied herself. When she opened the broad glass door, blessed air conditioning drew her inside.

  Her eyes took precious seconds to adjust to the florescent lighting after being in the sun. She stood in the foyer squinting, smelling book glue and old paper, before she ducked behind a row of geography and history books. She rested her palms against the tattered spines and willed her pulse to slow. Not until someone removed a volume from the shelving behind hers, leaving a hole for her to peep through, did she give a start.

  It couldn’t be Creede Franklin sitting at the conference table over there, could it? After all these years, he still looked the same. Tess shifted to the biography and travel section for a better view.

  There could be no mistaking him with his wide shoulders and his leather flight jacket and his sandy curls cropped close around his ears. If she had any doubts, those were erased when he glanced up with his familiar brown eyes.

  She darted behind the stacks so he wouldn’t see her, felt her pulse start to pound again.

  The preacher’s son.

  Tess didn’t recognize the man sitting across the table from Creede. This uniformed gentleman had only slightly more hair than a bowling ball, buzzed close in the way that made you want to rub against the grain and say something funny. He couldn’t have been much older than Creede himself, yet he looked so official with a laptop computer and a stack of forms to be filled out waiting in front of him.

  “Any injuries?” he was asking Creede. “Any medication?” And when Creede shook his head no, the stranger’s fingers tapped the keyboard in sharp jolts.

  “Any history of medical problems?”

  Creede shook his head again.

  Tess moved a little closer, trying to figure out why they’d be talking about such things. From the General Works shelf, she picked up the latest edition of the Echo-Bulletin and shook it open, just looking for something to hide behind. As luck would have it, the paper opened to the classifieds—the Personals section. “A loving choice.” “Free confidential support services.” “A gift that keeps on giving.” “Help a child for a lifetime.”

  She folded that particular classified section into fourths, eighths, until it was very small. She shoved it toward the rear of the shelf.

  “Have you ever had asthma?”

  Creede said, “When I was a little kid, once.”

  “When was that?”

  “On a Cub Scouts camping trip. I was running through stinging nettle and I fell and I—”

  “If you say you’ve had asthma, they won’t take you. And it’s been so long ago.”

  “Really?”

  The recruiter nodded, his fingers poised expectantly over the keys.

  “They wouldn’t take me in the Air Force just because of that?”

  A nod.

  Creede, leaving Butlers Bend? Joining the Air Force? He’d never told her he was thinking of that.

  Tess remembered how, when other Butlers Bend boys raced along Texoma Road, squealing their brakes around the midtown curve marked by caution lights, Creede Franklin had taken his daring to the sky. While other kids learned to parallel park between orange cones in the high school parking lot, Creede managed to perform a ground loop. When everyone else had been learning how to speed up and merge onto the highway, Creede had been learning how to pull up short so the green-and-yellow Grumman wouldn’t hopscotch into his grandfather’s cotton field.

  The high school girls had all gone mad for him then. On any given afternoon, three or four of them would be waiting out by the farm-to-market road, giggling and twittering, trying to convince him to give them rides in that old plane.

  Only it hadn’t been like that for Tess. Oh, no.

  Tess had been in love with Creede Franklin since the second-grade Christmas pageant.

  Every year at Butlers Bend Baptist, Creede played Joseph because he was the pastor’s son. Beautiful, blonde Paige Lee Wort always nabbed the role of Mary. And Tess, who often fought against going to Sunday school because she didn’t like wearing itchy tights, ended up being an extra sheep because she wasn’t in attendance when Mrs. Storm doled out halos and assigned the angel parts.

  That Sunday before Christmas, the telephone rang just as Tess and her mother headed out the door. When her mother answered it, Mrs. Storm began talking so loud Tess could hear every word. “Oh, thank heavens you’re still home. Nora, can we borrow Tess’s doll to be Jesus? Paige Lee brought hers this morning and, well . . . it’s a Cabbage Patch doll. I like Cabbage Patch dolls, mind you, but somehow it just doesn’t seem right, that big round plastic head with that little tuft of yarn. It just doesn’t seem like Jesus. I was hoping to find something more traditional.”

  Even though her father didn’t attend church, he watched their time schedule. He was always proud of her mom for doing the right thing. He pointed at his watch. “Nora, you’re going to be late.”

  Her mother covered the mouthpiece with her hand. “Tess? Can you run and find Pink Baby? Do you know where she is?”

  Tess nodded. “She’s in my toy box. Right on top.”

  “Go grab her. They want us to bring her along. They want her to be Jesus.”

  Even though Tess stood in the periphery that day, with her sheep costume tight enough around her belly that it gave her a stomachache and the black velvet ears on her furry hood folding forward when they were supposed to hang to the side, the pageant felt better than it had ever felt before. Something of Tess had been placed in front today, highlighted in center stage. Phoebe Rakes stepped forward to say her only line, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that shall be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

  Tess couldn’t stand still any longer. The baby in cloths, lying in the manger, was hers.

  She stepped out, jostling the wings of several angels, and making Daniel Staves, the camel, move aside. She climbed over two strategically placed bales of hay and worked her way past Maddy Fox, who wore her mother’s satin robe and carried a polished wooden box so she looked rich and smart, like one of the wise men. Just as Adam Davis released the rope from the choir loft and lowered the gold spray-painted star, Paige Lee grabbed her by the wrist and said with a violent whisper, “What do you think you’re doing, Tess Crab-Apple-Tree?” Paige Lee elbowed her away. “Sheep aren’t supposed to come this close.”

  Creede Franklin was two years older; he had no reason to even know who she was. Just by looking at him, you could tell who he belonged to. All that golden curly hair, and the long nose, and great elbows that jutted out like the handles of fence-cutters. And suddenly he reached out his hand and drew her forward. “She can be up here
if she wants to.”

  “This isn’t what it’s supposed to look like!” Paige Lee hissed through clenched teeth.

  “How do you know what it was supposed to look like, Paige Lee?” he shot back.

  At that moment, Laura Clark said her line, “And all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.” On cue, the three of them leaned over and peered into the manger, into the face of Pink Baby, Mary (Paige Lee) and Joseph (Creede), with Tess between them. Even though she wore sheep’s clothing as thick as a bathmat, Tess had felt Paige Lee and Creede crowding against her. If Creede hadn’t been standing up for her, shielding her with his arms, Paige Lee would have crowded her all the way out.

  Seven years later, Creede Franklin was the first boy she ever kissed, the one who sat hip-to-hip with her on the front steps of Butlers Bend Baptist after evening service and pointed out the stars that made Pegasus and Orion, the perfect line of Orion’s belt, the upside down neck of the horse, the bright point of Orion’s long sword. Even now, remembering what it felt like to follow the sight of Creede’s gesture toward the sky, her cheek resting against the rough cloth of his sleeve, brought a longing to her heart.

  The Air Force recruiter in the library was asking him, “Why don’t you go ahead and answer the question, Creede. Have you ever had asthma?”

  “Nope.”

  The recruiter typed that, squinted and double-checked the screen. “That ought to work.”

  Tess started to step forward. But when Creede spoke again, she stopped. “What are the chances of me getting Carswell after boot camp? Any idea?”

  “You’re not color-blind, are you? They won’t take you if you’re color-blind.”

  “No. I’m not.”

  “Any broken teeth? Crowns? That sort of thing?”

  Creede opened his mouth to show his teeth, pulling his lips away from his gums. He might as well have been showing horse teeth instead of his own. He pointed. “Righ ere.”