No River Too Wide (19 page)

Harmony worked hard every day. If Brad and Rilla Reynolds could be accused of any mistake, it would be overreaching. They had more plans for their farm than they had hands and hours, and everybody, including her, worked hard to achieve success. But she couldn’t imagine a life in which everything she did had to be perfect, so innovative and yet so traditional, that she could use it to generate business or publicity.

“That just seems so...hard.” She couldn’t think of a better way to phrase her feelings.

“Oh, Karen loves it. She really does. She and all her blogger friends. It’s like a great big club of happy homemakers. You read their blogs and you really believe that raising thriving kids and having a good marriage are goals anybody can achieve with a little work.”

“It’s a crock.”

Nate had been looking around, as if to see if he knew anybody else to introduce her to. His head snapped back to the front and his eyes widened. “Are you kidding?”

Harmony could feel her temper igniting, but she couldn’t seem to control her tongue. “I am
not
kidding. If these people are happy, it’s because they made lucky choices, or because they won some kind of heavenly lottery. I’m delighted for them, and glad they feel inclined to pep up the rest of us and share the wealth. But people make lots of unlucky choices, too, and they get stuck with the results, sometimes forever. Not all marriages are good. In fact, a lot of them are awful. And you can’t decoupage over a bad life and turn it into a good one.”

“You don’t think Karen and Jeff deserve what they have? That maybe they worked hard to get it?”

“Nate, look around. Look how hard Karen has worked to make
this
happen, and she’ll probably keep working until the last guest is gone and the last dish washed. I’m tired just thinking about it. Is she allowed to make mistakes? Is she allowed to try anything that has a high risk of failure? Can she be late for a teacher-parent conference, or forget to take one of those carefully groomed little girls to a piano lesson, or even let them wear raggedy jeans and play in mud puddles? She has a reputation at stake. She probably puts sequins on their raggedy jeans and turns them into fancy shopping bags. The closest those girls get to mud puddles is to show off brand-new rain slickers Karen’s created from heavy duty garbage bags or something.”

“Wow. What brought this on?”

Harmony knew what had brought it on. Surrounding her she saw the same struggle for perfection she had witnessed her entire childhood. She didn’t know if Jeff abused Karen, and abuse was the reason Karen tried so hard. For all she knew, Karen was abusing Jeff, instead, insisting he be part of her maniacal march to the top of the homemaker blogs and never track in mud or ask for something for supper other than one of the two hundred variations of Crock-Pot chicken she was turning into a cookbook.

Of course, maybe they were truly happy doing everything they did, and perfectly happy when they made mistakes because they could laugh and try again. But Harmony’s mother had never been perfectly happy. And even when she had been perfect in every other way, she had still borne the brunt of her husband’s abuse.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just that I look around and I worry. That’s all. Because you know what? I bet even now Karen’s looking around, and instead of feeling pleased and proud, she just noticed a weed in the flower bed or a wrinkle in her husband’s pants, or a flea on the family dog.”

“Family
cat.
Not a dog. Foo-Foo. She has her own blog.”

“You have got to be kidding!”

He grinned, and she realized he was.

“Harmony...” He took her hand and leaned over the table so she could hear him. “Jeff was injured in Iraq, so he can’t hold down a job, because he’s spending too much time in the hospital while they finish putting him back together. Instead, he takes care of this property when he’s not in an operating room, and Karen supports the family doing whatever she can to stay at home to keep her eye on him. They aren’t perfect. Sometimes they yell at each other, and they both cry a lot, and when nobody’s taking photos they eat McDonald’s and watch dumb movies on television and forget to make the bed. They’re getting by the best way they can, but they’ll make it.”

She felt awful. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

He squeezed her hand. “Apology accepted. Now what about you? Are
you
going to make it?”

* * *

Jan hadn’t really forgotten how adorable babies were; she had pushed that memory into a dark closet and locked it away where it would stay safe from her husband’s scorn. Rex had never approved of the way she “spoiled” their children, how she had gone out of her way to fix them whatever they wanted for breakfast or hand-washed a special T-shirt to wear to school the next morning. He had often belittled her parenting skills, but she and the children had learned to save the special moments to enjoy when he wasn’t at home.

Then, when there were no more children in the house, she’d had no one to share those moments with and remembering them had been too painful.

Now the memories, and the feelings that came along with them, were flooding back.

“You don’t like applesauce?” Jan waved the spoon in a figure eight. “Not even flying applesauce?”

Lottie, sitting in the bouncy chair Harmony had sent along, looked as if she knew she’d been had, but she opened her mouth and let the spoon land on her tongue. She swallowed, but the moment the applesauce was gone, she put her hand over her mouth to seal out more.

“I guess you’ve really had enough, huh, sweetie?” Jan took a warm cloth and wiped Lottie’s hands and face as the little girl tried to evade her. “Your mommy used to wait until I turned my head. Then she spit out half her dinner. I don’t know where she kept it while she waited, but I hope you don’t do that.”

Lottie screwed up her face, and Jan lifted her out of the chair. She had been a young mother. Harmony
was
a young mother. Theoretically even though Jan was now a grandmother, she was still young enough to have more children of her own. So why did she feel like an old woman who had been dragged behind an ice-cream truck after three hours of her charming granddaughter’s company?

“Let’s go find Vanilla,” she told Lottie. “Then we’ll build another house out of blocks.”

Lottie began to sniffle. The baby needed a nap—no mother ever forgot the signs. But so far she hadn’t been interested in taking one, even after Jan had tried every trick to get her to sleep.

Just as Lottie began to rub her eyes, Taylor came into the living room to stand beside her. “I’ll tell you what used to put Maddie to sleep. I would sing to her.”

“I tried that.”

“No, you don’t understand.
I
would sing to her. I have such an awful voice poor Maddie fell asleep in self-defense. Her father sings like an angel, and he tells me that whenever he sang to her, she would stay awake for hours just listening—which we can take with a grain of salt since Jeremy’s a bit of an egotist. But maybe I ought to give the next lullaby a try.”

Jan held the baby tighter and began to sway as Lottie fidgeted in her arms. “If Harmony comes to get her and Lottie’s fussing, she’s going to think I’m not reliable.”

“Are you kidding? She’s still going to think she’s the luckiest woman in the world. A mom right here in town who wants to help? It doesn’t get better.”

Jan had heard enough of Taylor’s history to know that as Maddie was growing up Taylor’s own mother hadn’t been in the picture. “I hope she feels that way. I love being here for her. I just wish...”

“You could do it more often. I know. But two weeks ago would you have believed we could arrange this? And we’ll arrange more, I promise.”

In an odd way, that led into a subject Jan had been contemplating since meeting Adam Pryor. She knew from Taylor that Adam would be teaching a self-defense class at her studio, beginning next Thursday afternoon. Nobody, not Adam or Taylor, had suggested she pursue it, but the idea had grown on its own. She didn’t need an invitation. She needed the courage to stand up for herself, and if she could walk into that classroom, wouldn’t that be half the battle?

There was still no guarantee Rex wouldn’t find her one day. And the one thing she did know was that she would never go back to Topeka or anywhere with her husband again.

“I want to take Mr. Pryor’s class.” She cleared her throat. “Adam. Adam’s class. Self-defense.”

Taylor just nodded. “That’s a good idea. Why didn’t I think of it?” Then she smiled. “Of course I thought of it, but it had to be up to you, right?”

“I’ll probably suck.”

Taylor laughed. “We’ll all suck.”

“You’re taking it, too?”

“I really need to be sure what he’s teaching fits with all the other classes on the schedule. Everything Adam says sounds great, but I’d be running in to check on him every chance I got, and that’s disruptive. So I decided I ought to take the class myself. Not to mention it’s never bad to be prepared, especially when you’re thinking about getting back into the dating scene.”

“Are you?” Jan realized she was prying. “I’m sorry. Don’t answer that.”

“Why not? I brought it up. And yes. I mean, I don’t have to hover over Maddie every minute anymore. People keep offering to fix me up with guys they know. If I say yes, I could run into a bad situation. Adam’s class might help me get out of one.”

“He’s a very attractive man.”

“Do you think so?” Taylor shrugged, but the studied casualness said everything Jan needed to know.

“Of course, if
he
was your bad situation, he could anticipate every move you used to thwart him,” Jan said.

“He’s clearly not somebody you’d want to start a fight with, is he? But he’s got a gentle side, too. Did you see him with Maddie? She thinks he’s great.”

Rex had pretended to be gentle, at least at first. Jan wondered if she would ever be able to tell the difference between pretense and reality, or if any woman could.

“I think she’s asleep.” Taylor pointed at Lottie.

As they’d talked Jan had continued swaying. She was glad to see it had finally worked. “I wonder if I can put her down yet.”

“She looks like she’s out for the count.”

As much as she loved her granddaughter, Jan was delighted to hear it. Even a few minutes to regroup would be welcome.

Five minutes later she inched the door to her bedroom closed and came back into the living room, where Taylor was doing stretching exercises. “Success.”

Taylor folded herself into something resembling a square knot and held the pose. “Sometimes I wonder about having more children. You know, if I find the right man while I still have working ovaries. Then I remember how exhausting those early years were.”

“More for you than for most people, I think.”

“Worth it once, but again?”

Jan couldn’t speak to that. She was so glad she’d had Harmony, even though bringing another child into the hell of her marriage had been selfish, even cruel. By then she had known another child wouldn’t change Rex except to make him more demanding, more insistent on perfection. Yet Harmony had arrived anyway, and now, asleep in Jan’s room, was the precious little baby girl who was a gift to all of them.

Somebody knocked at the door, and Jan got up to answer it since Taylor was unlikely to untie herself anytime soon. She wasn’t surprised to see her daughter in the doorway, and she gave her a quick hug.

“
You
probably shouldn’t have opened the door,” Harmony said. “What if somebody was following me?”

“I honestly didn’t think. I’m sure you were careful.”

“I zipped along a few rural roads and doubled back once to make sure I wasn’t being followed. It feels like a game, or something out of a movie. Not that much fun, though.”

Harmony looked tired, and a little pale, not like somebody who’d just been on an enjoyable date, but more like somebody who was under too much stress.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. How did Lottie do? Where is she?”

“I just put her down for a nap. She absolutely refused to go in earlier. I did try.”

“She was probably so fascinated to have your attention she didn’t want to give it up.”

“Let me make you a cup of tea.”

Taylor was off the floor now and searching for her purse. She stopped long enough to give Harmony a brief hug. “I’m going to run over to the studio. Maddie’s going to be home in a little while. Will you be here to catch her?”

“Absolutely,” Jan said. “You go. Maybe Harmony will keep me company until Lottie Lou wakes up.”

Taylor left, and Jan put the kettle on while Harmony flopped down on the sofa.

“So, the date?” Jan asked when she joined her.

“He’s a really nice guy. Cute. Polite. Thoughtful.” She hesitated. “Perceptive.”

“That sounds good.”

“I ended up telling him about my childhood.”

Jan thought that probably explained why her daughter looked so tired. “Oh.”

“I went off on him about the family who was throwing the party, about how the mother clearly thought everything had to be perfect and how unhealthy that was.”

“I see.”

“Do you? I’m still not sure why everything hit me so hard. I thought I’d gotten good at pushing my life before Asheville into the background. I even got pretty good at not worrying about you all the time. Not perfect, but better.”

“One of the last things I said to you before you left Kansas was not to worry about me.”

“Did you stop worrying about
me?
”

Jan didn’t know how to answer that, and one thing she had learned from her life with Rex was to say nothing unless she knew exactly the right thing to say. And even then, not to say it with conviction.

“I finally figured out there wasn’t anything I could do from here,” Harmony said after a moment. “I couldn’t call the police and report my father for abuse, because even if they bothered to show up at your door you would have sent them away. If they guessed you were just afraid to talk to them, what could they do? And having them involved would have made your life so much worse.”

Jan agreed silently.

“When I was a little girl, my secret wish was that my father would simply disappear one day. And now he has, and you’re here and safe. If God is at all merciful, He will understand why I hope Dad never reappears. And maybe He’ll see I’m trying hard not to feel any joy that something awful might have happened to him.”