The Sweetgum Knit Lit Society (5 page)

“This is Sweetgum, Frank. Who’s going to walk into my house that I don’t know?”

She waved him inside and then followed behind, closing the door firmly against the night and the outside world.

And she wondered what Jo March would do if she were the one in love with her sister’s husband.

Merry knew she shouldn’t resent the fact that Jeff was staying at the office after hours to catch up on his backlog of cases. He had always been a hard worker and a good provider. But these days she rarely saw him, and she missed him. Missed the way he came through the door and kissed her, loosened his tie, fixed himself a glass of iced tea and sat down on a bar stool at the kitchen island to tell her about his day and ask about hers.

Merry sighed and continued to chop the onion for the casserole, the hum of the refrigerator and the occasional rumble of the icemaker her only company. She’d been reading the opening chapters of
Little Women
—first in the carpool lane at school and then later curled up in her favorite reading chair while the kids did their homework—and now dinner was behind schedule. But she was determined to finish the book this month and set a good example for the Knit Lit Society’s
newest member. And so now she was chopping onion double time, trying not to take off the tip of a finger in the process.

The sharp sting of the onion brought tears to her eyes, but she continued on, the knife hitting the butcher block with even, satisfying
thwacks
. The kids would hate this recipe. She didn’t know why she bothered.

A scarf. A wool scarf. She couldn’t think of anything more boring for the month’s knitting project. As for
Little Women
, well, she was determined to at least get an A for effort. She’d read the book once years ago and thrown it away in disgust, just as Jo March had thrown away her chance to marry her wealthy best friend Lawrence and instead settled for an old, rumpled German professor and a life of poverty. As a mature adult, Merry still wasn’t entirely convinced that the author had made her case for true love over deprivation and hardship. Fortunately for Merry, she hadn’t been faced with that choice. Jeff had been her high school sweetheart, and he’d also been smart and ambitious enough to satisfy even Merry’s demanding mother.

Courtney appeared in the kitchen doorway and slouched against the frame. “Mom, where did you put my library book?” Like most thirteen-year-olds, Courtney believed that every glitch in her existence was due to her mother’s incompetence. Merry remembered feeling that way herself once upon a time, but these days she had newfound sympathy for her own mother.

“I haven’t seen your book. It’s not in your backpack?”

Courtney rolled her eyes and sighed as if Merry had just uttered the stupidest words ever to fall from the lips of a human being. “No, it’s not in my backpack. Would I have asked you where it was if it was in my backpack?!”

She should discipline her daughter for sassing her. Merry knew that. Courtney’s attitude had nosedived in recent months, but Merry was so tired and worried and confused and she’d been letting Courtney take advantage of her for so long that she didn’t know if she had the strength to enforce the rules now.

“Are you sure you brought it home from school?”

“Mom, if you’re not going to be helpful, just don’t say anything, okay?” Courtney spun away in a twirl of long hair and self-righteousness.

Merry scooped up the onion and dumped it into the bowl with the chicken and rice mixture. She’d clipped the recipe out of
Southern Living
several months ago. The kids would certainly have preferred McDonald’s or even frozen chicken nuggets, but every once in a while, she made herself prepare a home-cooked meal and forced her kids to eat it.

“Mom! Where’s my uniform? Did you wash it?” Jake came tearing into the kitchen and then slid across the Brazilian slate floor in his stocking feet before coming to a stop with a bang against the custom white pine cabinets. “I’ve got a game tomorrow.”

“I told you to put your uniform in the laundry room if it needed to be washed. Where did you see it last?”

Jake shrugged. “I dunno. You can find it faster than I can anyway.”

Merry sniffed and wiped back onion tears. “All right. Let me get the casserole in the oven.” Sometimes it was just easier to do it herself.

“Casserole?” He made a gagging sound and clutched his stomach before sinking to the floor in a paroxysm of mock agony. “Don’t kill me before the game. My team needs me.”

Merry laughed. Jake’s sauciness didn’t hold the edge of contempt that Courtney’s did. He was honest to a fault but rarely judgmental. She wondered if the hormone poisoning that was puberty would turn Jake against her as it had Courtney.

By the time she’d searched the house for Jake’s uniform, as well as Courtney’s missing library book, she was exhausted. The early stages of pregnancy had always been like that for her. With the older two, she’d been proud of herself if she could stay awake to watch the six o’clock news. When Sarah came along, Courtney and Jake were in school and she’d napped during the day to compensate for her need for extra sleep. Now Sarah was in preschool, but only for a few hours in the morning. Naps were not in Merry’s immediate future.

It was after seven o’clock before the casserole finished baking and Merry herded all three children to the table. Guilt
pricked at her, sharp and needlepointed. A better mother would have dinner on the table at six, not seven. A better mother would have served at least two green vegetables (that everyone would eat) along with the hateful casserole. A better mother’s children would be devoted to her. That Marmee character in
Little Women
didn’t know how good she had it. Sure, her family was poor, cold, and often hungry. But when Marmee came home, the girls vied with one another to plump her cushion, bring her tea, and rub her feet. Clearly Merry had missed the boat somewhere.

“Mom? Where’s Dad?” Jake pushed the casserole around on his plate with a fork. He’d wolfed down two dinner rolls in seconds, but he wasn’t in any hurry to tackle the main course. Merry sat at one end of the long dining room table, Courtney and Sarah on her left and Jake on her right. The chair opposite Merry’s was conspicuously empty.

“He’s got a big case right now, Jake, and he’s trying to catch up on some things. I know it’s hard for you not to have him here, but it won’t be forever.” That empty chair was the price they all paid for the large Colonial-style house that backed up to the ninth fairway of the Sweetgum Country Club.

“How much less than forever will it be?” Jake looked at her with the wide-eyed innocence of a nine-year-old boy.

Merry chuckled. “A lot less than forever, honey. And Dad will be at your game tomorrow. He promised.”

Her reassurance mollified Jake, who decided to risk a bite of the casserole. Merry watched out of the corner of her eye as he placed the tiniest bite imaginable on his fork, transferred it to his tongue, and then swallowed as if ingesting poison.

“Did it kill you?” she teased.

Jake frowned. “I don’t know. Depends on if it’s fast-acting or not.”

Fast-acting? Where had he learned that? Courtney had probably been letting him sneak into her room again to watch the forbidden
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
.

The rattle and hum of the garage door opening caught everyone’s attention.

“Daddy’s home!” shrieked Sarah, her blond halo of curls flying as she leaped from the chair and raced out of the room.

“Wait! I get to talk to him first!” Jake yelled, streaking after her. Only Courtney remained at the table with Merry.

“Whatever,” she said with a flip of her stick-straight hair over her shoulder. Her darker blond mane would have been as curly as Sarah’s if she didn’t ruthlessly attack it each morning with her two-hundred-dollar ceramic flat iron.

Merry took the opportunity to wolf down her meal. Rarely did she have the chance to eat her food while it was still warm. Jake and Sarah had Jeff pinned down in the kitchen, and she could hear the two children battling for their father’s attention and Jeff’s deep-voiced responses. He wasn’t the lead bass in the church choir for nothing.

By the time Jeff appeared in the dining room doorway, Merry was finished with her meal. She hopped up, empty plate in hand. “I’ll fix yours. Go ahead and sit down.”

Jeff smiled his thanks, but he wasn’t nearly as chatty with her as he’d been with the kids. He did greet Courtney, who shrugged and responded with a sullen, “Hey.”

Merry’s eyes met Jeff’s across the dining room. They exchanged a mutual grimace at the trials of parenting a teenage girl, and then Merry hustled off to the kitchen for Jeff’s dinner. When she returned, Courtney had disappeared, leaving her alone with her husband for the first time in the very long week since the indicator on the little test stick had turned pink.

“You’re home earlier than I thought you’d be.” She set the plate in front of him. “Do you want some iced tea?”

“That would be great.”

Jeff was still as handsome as he’d been the day she married him almost fifteen years ago. How unfair that women battled the aging process with every weapon at their disposal while men simply evolved into a deeper degree of masculinity.

“Mom!” Courtney’s shriek traveled down the stairs and into the dining room. “Make Sarah get out of my room!” A high-pitched preschooler wail immediately followed.

Jeff dropped his fork. “Is it too much to hope for a little peace and quiet when I come home?” Weariness tinged his voice and his expression.

“Mo-om!” Courtney’s second wail competed with her sister’s sobs.

The dryer buzzed from the laundry room off the kitchen, signaling that Jake’s uniform was clean.

“Mom, can you get that?” he called from the family room, where he was no doubt killing an alien life form on his PlayStation 3.

Merry felt the first tear slide down her cheek, quickly followed by the second. Jeff looked at her, and though he tried to hide it, she could see his frustration.

“I quit,” she whispered, the words mixed with the salt of tears on her tongue.

“What?” Jeff stood and picked up his empty plate. “What did you say?”

“I quit.” More forcefully this time, a bit bolder. The words felt good in her mouth, slipping from her lips.

Jeff did manage a faint smile. “Are you having a midlife crisis?”

Merry laughed, a sharp, short bark that sounded as caustic as she felt. “Hardly.”

Now Jeff’s brow knitted together in concern. He wasn’t a bad man—just an overworked one.

“I’ll do better,” he said. Merry saw that look of panic edge into his eyes, the look men got when they thought their wife might leave them home alone with the kids.

“I don’t know if I can do it anymore, Jeff.” She hated that
she cried when she was angry or upset. Why couldn’t she just rant and rave like her father had? Maybe she should try throwing a few dishes or punching the back door just to see if it helped.

But she couldn’t. Of course she couldn’t. Not Merry McGavin. Wife of one of Sweetgum’s prominent attorneys. One-time president of the PTA. Chair of the Christian education committee at church.

“I’ll sort things out with the girls,” Jeff said. “Why don’t you go take a shower?”

What she really wanted to do was talk to him. Like they used to do, when they were dating. When they could spend hours in each other’s company and never run out of conversation.

“Okay. Thanks.” A shower would feel good, and she knew it was the best offer she was likely to get.

Jeff stepped toward her and bent down to kiss her forehead. “Sorry for being such a grouch.”

“It’s okay.”

But it wasn’t really. Because she was pregnant, and she was afraid to tell her husband. Because the little cracks in her relationship with Jeff—normal, ordinary flaws—now seemed to be multiplying and spreading. And because the life they had built together, which had once seemed to her as strong as an oak, had somehow become as fragile as a house of cards.

Hannah squinted against the darkness to make out the last few words on the page. She ached from sitting on the bare ground outside her mom’s bedroom window, but the porch light had burned out again, and only the soft glow from the opening above her head held back the night. She ignored the muffled noises coming from the room above. Gentry Carmichael would leave soon. He never stayed the night. And Hannah wasn’t going back in that trailer until he was good and gone.