“I heard about your hike.” Clara was putting the last of the clean glasses away as she directed that statement towards me. I had to admit, Clara was my favorite. Her pastel pink hair and her sweet smile made her always a joy to be around. She had been here a few summers and I depended on her a lot for things I didn’t know. I also knew her and Ty were cousins. Which made whatever was going on between Ty and I only slightly awkward to talk about with Clara.
“Yeah, it was nice.”
Clara raised an eyebrow. “Only nice? Ty took you to his favorite spot. Well, one of them. The only person he has ever taken there is Annabelle.”
It was amazing that in some ways I was jealous of a child. I didn’t even like kids. I was never around them and they mostly scared the shit out me. To know I shared something special with a child was mind-boggling.
“Tell me about her,” I asked Clara. It wasn’t like I was trying to know about another women with Ty. Nope, I wanted to know about the most important girl in it. The thought almost made me say screw it and give up. Could I ever compete with that? With a child who had simply won the heart of Ty with only a look.
Clara gave me the biggest smile. I was already losing with that smile.
“Oh sweet Belle is an angel. She has this blonde hair and the same eyes as Ty, a perfect hazel. Her smile is bright and slightly crooked and every time I see her I can’t help but want to cuddle her all day.”
My eyes widen and I put a hand against the bar. Lightheaded as I heard the perfect description, but Clara kept going.
“She’s smart, too. Takes after Ty with always asking questions but sometimes she can be shy, which she gets from Brooke. She always tells me she wants to be a librarian when she grows up so she can spend time meeting new people every day, in books and in person.”
Clara paused her a second and brought her brows together as she said, “Are you okay? You look a little pale Jolene.”
Ty’s perfect daughter. A little blonde angel. I not only had to learn how to act around kids, I had to do it good enough to convince Ty I could be around his kid.
Why was I doing this? I usually gave up at this point and moved on. I had moved on for much less complicated men before. Why him?
“I don’t think I can do this,” I said out loud to Clara, his damn cousin. I never acted this way. Where was cool, calm, and collected Jolene? It was like this whole summer took everything I knew and put it on its axis so I couldn’t find my center. The real question was, did I ever have my center? Or was it meant to all come crashing down at one point?
I heard Elizabeth’s giggle across the room. It was impossible to miss because it was that fucking annoying. I turned to see her talking to some guy. Nothing new there. Totally didn’t matter if she was sleeping with another guy, every guy was an opportunity to her.
When the guy turned so I could see his face, I about punched the bar. Son of a bitch. I did not need this today.
I started to storm off towards him as I heard Clara call out my name with confusion.
I walked straight up to him and got in his face as close as I could without it looking like a confrontation. It was enough to get in the middle of him and Elizabeth.
“You need to leave,’ I told Troy. Once in my bar was enough for this douche. Brother or not, I didn’t need him to keep butting into my life.
“How’s the painting going?” he asked instead.
Fuck him. Fuck him for waltzing in here and thinking he could ask me about my life.
I leaned towards him and lowered my voice as I politely said with a smile, “Go the fuck away.”
“You’re saucy, JoJo. You must get it from Mom.”
I no longer wanted to punch the bar. I wanted to punch Troy.
Mom? What right did he have to claim her as his mother?
Walking away was not what I wanted to do, no but I was smart enough to know I was still in my workplace and this was not the place. Elizabeth could deal with the asshole.
I hid in the back and found Clara right behind me.
“Are you okay?” she asked me.
“No.”
She looked lost, not sure what to do.
“Who is that?” Clara looked to the door and back, like Troy was going to walk in at any second. “An ex or something?”
I laughed. If only it was that simple.
“I don’t know him. He claims he knows me and my family, but he doesn’t. No one knows that heartaches better than me. I earned that heartache.”
I could tell Clara was at a loss for words, but she sat next to me and put her hand on my back, rubbing it lightly.
“I can tell him to leave,” she told me.
“I already told him to, but I’m sure Elizabeth is distracting him.”
I sat there for another minute, composing myself and then got up to see if he had left. When I walked out, I was annoyed to see he not only was still here but also had his hand on Elizabeth’s ass. Classy.
I walked over to him, again, and this time more calmly said, “Let’s go outside. You can say what you want but then you really have to leave.”
I didn’t give him a chance to answer but walked out the side door. He followed, detaching himself from Elizabeth.
“JoJo . . .” he started. I put a hand up to him.
“Please for the love of everything holy, stop calling me JoJo.”
“Jolene . . .” he started again. “I do have a reason why I’m here.”
“Great, spit it out and then go on your way.” My arms were crossed over my chest and I gave him my best unenthused face.
“Mom-” I huffed loudly. He stopped. “Fine. Your mother is sick Jolene.”
Whatever tough face I was trying to hold fell, my arms uncrossing and falling limply to the side.
“What?” Sick? What did that even mean?
“She wanted me to contact you because she doesn’t know what’s going to happen.”
Confusion filled my head. “Tell me everything,” I demanded.
“They are still trying to figure it all out, but it doesn’t look good.”
My mother was sick. Whatever feeling I had was unidentifiable. Was I sad? In shock? She had left us, and now that she was sick was I supposed to be sad? Because I didn’t know if that was the feeling coursing through me.
“What do you want from me?” Since there was a reason why he was here.
“She wants to see you.”
Of course she did.
“I don’t know . . .” I get it, she was sick, but I was hurt and betrayed. I knew last time Troy came in, I told him she could talk to my face, but I was no regretting saying that. I really didn’t want to see, as sad as it sounded.
“Think about it.” He handed me a business card. “My cell is on that. Call me when you decide to see her. It would make her happy.”
Did she deserve to be happy? Because I wasn’t. Guilt swept through me. God, what kind of person was I? She was sick and I was debating if she deserved to be happy. I was an awful person.
***
Troy left after our conversation and I went home shortly after that. Another draining day here in the mountains. I needed to be rejuvenated. I could call Ty and he could help with that, but I knew he was leaving the next morning pretty early. To whatever he did. I really needed to figure that out. It was evening, but with the summer sun I had plenty of time to spend outside.
I then did something I never thought I would do. I put on my running shoes and threw in my earphones, deciding to take a run. I even went on the trail behind my cabin. It was a slow pace and there was no sexy Ty in front of me to spur me on, but the music was blaring in my ears and motivated me to keep moving.
By the time I got back the sunny sky had quickly turned into clouds gathering strength and covering the mountains. It was strange how simple clouds could so easily cover the giant monster of mountains. As I made dinner and showered, it grew darker outside. Soon the sun was set and I was quietly sitting next to a burning fire with my sketchbook. I was drawing over and over again a face of a little girl with blonde hair. It was Ty’s daughter as Clara as described her. Did it make sense to me why I was choosing this to sketch tonight? Not in the least. I felt like if I drew her, even though I had never met her, it would ease my worries about it. How much harm and worry could one little girl bring?
Plus it was distracting me from the issue with my mom. I was choosing the lesser of the problems right now. Between Troy’s visit and dealing with the feelings I was starting to have for Ty, drawing was calming me as it often did.
I was around the age of Annabelle when my dad started to notice how much I loved to draw. I wasn’t into coloring, but I was more than happy with a colored pencil and paper. I drew simple things when I was little, a flower or a puppy. Little things but it was more than the stick figure families and square houses. A part of me felt like my education killed my creativity. I was focused on the logical side and many times drawing meant following the lines, but I wanted to draw in flowing motions. My dad was good enough to put me in lessons for art outside of school so I didn’t let the creativity die. He saw it and I was thankful for it. My mother, on the other hand, wanted to manipulate it. She tried to push me into paintings rather than drawings. Oil paintings to be precise. I wasn’t horrible at it, but it never gave me the same feeling like simple pencils and paper did. It was not my favorite medium. My mother thought if I excelled at it, she could sell the paintings. When she left, I never picked up an oil-based paint again. I didn’t miss it, even if I thought I missed my mother.
When I went to college it made sense to go into art for my major. That logical side kicked in as well and I made sure I had business classes so I could easily freelance. I did graphic design for many companies in Boise and the art I did on my own time was for sale in June’s coffee shop. I had offers to sell it other places, but I declined. I never wanted my passion to feel like a duty. I always wanted it to feel organic, because to me it had healing powers. I never wanted to lose that.
I looked out the small sliver of window behind the blinds. It was suppose to be a full moon out tonight, but it was almost black outside. I put my pad down and walked out onto the front porch. It was still warm but I could smell the storm in the sky, could feel the electricity in the air. I shivered as I wrapped the sweater around me tighter. Even warm up here meant a light sweater. It was getting late. I went back inside and climbed into bed, into my little alcove. The only light was the glowing ember of the logs still burning, holding onto the heat. While I considered myself an artist, there were some things that seemed impossible to capture. The perfect blend of reds that emitted from the black charred wood were put together so effortlessly. Life was a piece of art and being up here in the mountains reminded me that everyday. How each color played a role in life, giving us heat or rain or beauty.
I feel asleep to the heated fill red hues and fell into a dreamless sleep, devoid of color.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Jolene
“A summer storm swept in today. Never in my days have I seen Mother Nature act this way. It was terrifying and beautiful all at the same time.”–From the diary of Maggie Brown, July 1891
White flashes, bright and frequent, startled me from sleep. At first I thought it was cop lights but then I remembered I wasn’t in the city and the likelihood of a cop being out here was slim. The flashes kept coming, over and over again every few seconds. I sat up in my bed and the last flash was followed with a loud and tremendous rumble that shook the whole cabin.
Thunder, it had to be thunder. I got out of bed and looked outside towards the mountains.
It was stunning and awfully frightening at the same time. Every few seconds the jagged mountain peaks were shown in the shadows of the lightening streaking across the sky. I had never seen anything like this; awe overtook me. As the second burst of thunder blasted above I jumped. Logically, it was completely irrational to be afraid of thunder. It was only sound and I knew that but people are not completely logical beings and thunder scared the shit out of me. Another crack of thunder and then the rain started to pour, loud and feverish. My eyes grew large as the lightening now highlighted the mountains and the rain that was pouring down. I took a few steps back from the door, freaked out about the storm going on. This small cabin was protecting me but I was alone and no one was close by. I tried to turn on a light but nothing happened. Great, the power was out as well. As the thunder continued, I knew I wasn’t going to be sleeping anytime soon. I re-started the fire and grabbed the small tea light candles, lighting them around the cabin. I didn’t really need them but the light helped, even if it was only candles. I looked at the clock on the wall and saw it was only eleven-thirty.
There was only one small couch facing the fireplace, but I decided to sit on the hard wooden floor, wrapped in a knitted blanket. The rain became louder as it fell on the cabin’s roof. I could hear every drop and it sounded like a bag of nails were being dropped from the sky, piercing through the clouds. I don’t know how long I sat there when I heard a loud banging on the door. I froze. Literally froze as my heart jumped into my throat and raced. My only thought was there was an ex-murder at the door. There had to be because who else bangs on a door during a crazy storm like this. An ax murder was the only answer. My breathing quickened and I gripped the blanket around me tighter, not moving. If I didn’t move, the boogey man couldn’t get me. Yet, whoever was out there was not giving up.
“Jo.” I heard my name called out and I dropped the blanket.
Ty calling my name made me jump and rush to the door. As I swung it open, light filled the sky and Ty was shown, drenched from the rain.
I screamed. I mean, I knew who it was but damn the sight of him standing outside soaked from the rain, he looked like an ax murder. So I screamed and then Ty barged in and closed the door behind him.
“Why are you screaming?” Panic was in his voice.
“You look like an ax murder!” I yelled back. The adrenaline was still racing through me. I was nowhere close to calm. A crash sounded to my right and I jumped, throwing my hands over my face, hiding from the sound.