Softly and Tenderly (3 page)

A bang beyond the shower door startled her. “Max?” She squeezed the water from her hair and peeked out to see her husband bent in front of the sink cabinet, hand to his forehead, his expression knotted. “What are you doing?”

“Bumping my head.” He leaned to assess the damage to his face in the mirror. “I was thinking of making breakfast. You want pancakes?” His silver-blue tie hung down the starched front of his navy shirt. His slacks were Armani.

“You’re in court today?” She shut off the water and reached for her towel. He always wore Armani to court. Claimed it gave his clients confidence and intimidated the prosecutor.

“Meeting with the opposing counsel on the class action case against MicroDevelopment.”

“Are they going to settle?”

“If there’s any good in the world, yes, oh please yes.” He fell against the sink and reached for her. “Your man’s been
on fire
lately.” He touched his lips to hers, tugging at her towel with a teasing growl. “In court, I mean.”

“Of course, in court. I didn’t think you meant in bed.” She kissed him, letting her towel fall around her feet, then spinning from his arms for the bedroom.

“Ouch, ow, wound a guy.” He stumbled from the bathroom, clutching his chest. “And on a day I might settle a very big case. My ego, darling. My ego.”

Jade laughed. “Somehow I think your ego can handle a bit of bruising from me.” She tugged open her dresser drawers, selecting clothes for the day. “And you know I’m teasing, right?”

“I do know.” From the middle of the room, he watched her, a yearning behind his brownish-gold wink. The burn of his gaze tempted her to press pause on the morning and reach for the buttons under his silky tie. “So where were you last night?” He moved past her for the chaise tucked under the dormer window, Jade’s favorite reading place on rainy afternoons, and grazed her hip with his fingertips.

“Went back down to the Blue Two.”

After the encounter between Rebel and June at the Orchid House, Jade needed distance between Mama and Max. So she drove back down to the city and attempted to bury the images and sounds by logging inventory and adding numbers.

“I had to call Sugar Plumbs for Mae to fix something for Beryl and me.”

“I’m sorry.” Jade snapped open her crisp, clean jeans. “I should’ve called.” Poor Mama, sitting home alone, waiting for someone to come.

“She kept asking about you. Couldn’t remember how long you’d been gone. She was starving.” Max leaned forward, arms on his thighs. “What was so important at the shop you couldn’t come home? Or call? Didn’t you check your missed calls? I called after dinner.”

“Got distracted. Sorry.” Jade crossed the room to her closet with a quick peek out the window. The day looked cold, like it might rain. “The Blue Two is a mess. I should’ve never hired Wanda. Manager at Bloomingdale’s, my eye.” She took a bell-sleeve blouse from its hanger. “I spent six hours just cleaning half the storeroom.”

“What about those two part-timers you hired?”

“Keri and Emma? Tweedledum and Tweedledee?” Jade returned to the bathroom to dry her hair. Why’d she promise June? Why? The secret hidden in her chest burned. “They quit. Three weeks ago. Wanda didn’t tell me until yesterday.”

Max, your father is having an affair
.

In the mirror, she watched Max watching her wield the blow-dryer. She waited, praying he’d go downstairs, make that breakfast he talked about.

“You can close it, you know. The Blue Two.”

“What?” Jade whipped around. “It’s only been two years. We’ve got to give baby Blue a chance. Really, I’ve not put the work into it. It’s my fault it’s failing. I thought Wanda would be another Lillabeth. Wonderful and hardworking. I ignorantly left her to her own incompetent devices.”

The downtown Chattanooga shop at the bend of the Tennessee River had been Jade’s distraction after her first miscarriage. Remembering the riverfront property her mother-in-law had discovered before she’d married Max, Jade checked on the availability of the warehouse-turned-into-shops. She and Max signed the papers within a week.

Busy expanding her vintage business after a successful first year, Jade considered her surprise second pregnancy last summer a sign from God.
Blessed
.

Max had implored her to hire a manager.
“Let’s do all we can to keep this
baby, shug.”

She liquefied when he called her
shug
and became putty in his emotional hands. Lillabeth, a college girl now and married to a Marine fighter pilot stationed in Iraq, worked at the Whisper Hollow Blue Umbrella after classes. If Jade found someone to look after the Blue Two, then she’d have time to channel her energy into making a baby.

Enter Wanda, the lying manger. Blissful, naive, and focused on staying pregnant, Jade left Wanda to her devices while she dreamed of motherhood. But near the end of her first trimester, she began bleeding. After the miscarriage, Jade had planned to visit the struggling riverfront shop more often, knowing it needed her tender, loving care. But she rarely made it down the mountain. Once a quarter. Maybe.

Now, almost two years after opening the store, she’d lost a good bit of Blue Two’s business credibility.

“Is it still worth it, babe? The second store?” Max watched her through the mirror, arms crossed.

“There’s a lot of inventory down there. And spring is coming . . . we can make up time and money between the tourists and the festivals. But if I can’t get it going again, then I’ll sell it.” Jade sighed, fluffed her hair with a quick sweep of the blow-dryer over her crown, then hung the dryer on the hook by the sink.

“You know I heard you. Sell it.” Max’s gaze flickered down, toward the cabinet, then swept upward, meeting Jade’s eyes in the mirror. He smiled.

“
If
, I said
if
I can’t get it going again. Wanda did a lot of damage to the inventory as well as our reputation.”

“Then I guess there’s nothing left for me to say, except I’ll go make breakfast.” But instead of backing away, he moved behind Jade, brushing his hand over her shoulders. “All this energy to get a second shop going . . . when the Blue Umbrella is going well here in Whisper Hollow. Makes me think you don’t want to
try
again.”

“I thought your final word was ‘I’ll go make breakfast.’”

“Jade . . .” Max turned her to face him, the emotion of his question lingering in his eyes. “Do you?”

“We
tried
the other night. And it’s not the Blue Two or the Blue Umbrella keeping me from getting pregnant, Max. Nor is either one the cause of the miscarriages.”

An anomaly. That’s what Dr. Wokowsky called her: an anomaly. But to Jade,
barren
trumpeted over her arid soul with a clarion tone. Every day more true than the one before.

“We don’t know for sure, Jade. Dr. Wokowsky said rest could help.”

“He made up that answer because you kept pushing him.” Jade freed herself from her husband’s embrace, reaching to the shelf beside the mirror for her makeup bag. “You almost gave him a heart attack, drilling him the way you did. You forget you’re a noted lawyer, Max. I bet all Wokowsky heard was ‘lawsuit, lawsuit.’ And pancakes for breakfast are fine. Use water instead of milk in the mix. Milk makes them too heavy.”

“Do you even want children, Jade?”

“Don’t ask stupid questions.”
And please give me my bathroom time
.

“It’s not a stupid question.”

“Max, I’m not on birth control. I’ve been pregnant three times. What do you want from me?” Jade tossed her makeup bag beside the sink. She didn’t want to wear any covering today. “I can straighten out the Blue Two, Max.” Socks, she needed a pair of socks. And shoes. “I
need
to straighten out the Blue Two.”

“Jade.” Max tenderly held her shoulders, touching her in the familiar way that only comes with marriage. Not possessive, not sexual, not harsh. But connecting.
I am yours, and you are mine
.

“I love you and will support whatever you decide to do. But I’m thirty-eight. I don’t want my retirement party to compete with my son’s high school graduation.”

“So you’ve said.” She dug around in her sock drawer.
Matching pair, matching
pair
. “Then you’d better talk to God, because I don’t know what else we can do.” Jade sank to the chaise and tugged on her socks. “Is Mama awake?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t heard any noise coming from her room.” Max perched next to her, a slice of gray light falling over the high rise of his cheeks and the smooth plane of his face. “Surrogate?”

“No.” Jade swerved, hooking her knee over his leg. “I can’t, Max. I have no peace about another woman becoming so intimately a part of our lives. It would be like . . . an affair. Look at the women in the Bible who tried to have children with surrogates. It was painful and deceptive.”

“You don’t trust me? Think I’ll fall in love with—”

“Babe, another woman would be carrying your precious son. Not me.”

“But it would be
our
DNA, babe. Your egg, my sperm.”

“And what is the plan for all the fertilized eggs we can’t or won’t use?” Jade shook her head. “Once, a very long time ago, a scared and heartbroken teenager decided she had the right to take a baby’s life. Max, I won’t be put in the position again of deciding when and if I should have a child. If God wants us to have children, it will have to be like He designed.”

She walked across the room. At the closet, Jade dug her feet into her mocha brown leather clogs. The truth of her confession anchored her drifting affections. The only way she’d ever be a mother was by divine intervention.

“We can cross that bridge when we come to it. Hey, I’m not opposed to having ten kids. We could get, like, four surrogates, line them up,
zip, zip, zip
, implant the fertilized eggs, and—”

“Max, do you think that’s funny? Because to me, it sounds rude and crass.”

“I can see you have no sense of humor—except making fun of my lovemaking.”

“If we’re not careful, it will only be about baby making.” She sighed. “Please, can we drop this and eat pancakes?”

Max came to her and cupped the back of her head, gently kissing her forehead. “I’m not looking for a fight here, babe. I just want—”

“A son, I know. What if we have a girl? Then what?” She’d need a sweater. The Blue Two’s storeroom wasn’t heated. And when the breeze kicked up off the water, Jade’s bones ached.

“We keep trying.” Max had all the answers today. “We adopt.”

“Why are you always so sure?” Jade slipped her arm around his neck and gave her cheek to the pump of his chest, the steady rhythm of his heart her intimate lullaby.

“Because I have you.” His hand slipped around her hip to the core of her back and bent her into him.

In these moments, doubt and fear were defeated foes. All other times, they were formidable and fierce.

“If it’s right, Max, we’ll adopt. But these are human beings we’re talking about, not a plea bargain for a two-bit druggie.”

“No plea bargain for a two-bit druggie.” He brushed back her hair and touched his lips to hers. “What can I do to give you hope?”

“Make breakfast?” She liked when she made him laugh from the belly, a surprised, joyful melody.

“To the kitchen.” He backed toward the door, spearing the air. “To the griddle and batter.”

“One more thing, babe. What did you need in the cabinet?” Jade jerked her thumb toward the bathroom. The only thing under the sink was cleaning supplies and towels. And the only person who used the space was Tammy, their cleaning lady.

“Nothing . . . I thought I’d put my, my mouthwash there.”

“Mouthwash is in the closet.”

“Right, right.” Max snapped his fingers, his expression molding to remember.

Mouthwash. Jade glanced into the bathroom and stared at the cabinet doors as if the answer would leap out at her. “I can’t go through this with you again. I’m not your mama.”

“Go through it? Babe, there’s
nothing
to go through.” Max paused at the door. “See you downstairs.”

In the midst of the baby debate, she’d shoved aside the uneasy scene of Max at the cabinet, jerking his head up so fast he crashed against the counter. Her gut told her she wasn’t the only one with a secret this morning. But his eyes were clear, a good sign he wasn’t using again. His energy was high, and his back hadn’t bothered him in months.

Jade snatched up her purse, glancing around to see if she’d forgotten anything. Max couldn’t be stashing pain meds again. Not after a month in rehab last year and six months clean. How could her brilliant lawyer husband be so stupid?

She stood in the bathroom doorway, starting at the cabinet.
Just open it and
see. Look, Jade
. Instead she backed away. Trust didn’t begin with snooping around after him. He said he wasn’t using, she had to believe him.

Or all of this—marriage, babies, and happily ever after—was for nothing.

She’d been counseled not to coddle or baby him. If Max wanted babies, he’d best not be popping Percocet for phantom back pains.

One trouble of being a noted Tennessee lawyer? It was easy for a man to find whatever he wanted.

“Jade?” Mama’s call floated down the hall. “What’s burning?”

“It’s Max, Mama. He’s making pancakes.”

Three

On a yellow and blue Saturday afternoon, Jade lured Keri and Emma back to work at the Blue Two. They were giggly and ditzy, but they could sell the heck out of retro clothes and music.

Sunday afternoon while Mama slept, Jade and Max holed up in their bedroom to work on, well, future projects, to the rhythm of the rain falling against the windows.

Max hoped for a boy. Jade for a girl. Really, either one. Max seemed adamant about a son. But just wait until a tiny angelic daughter wrapped her wee hand around his finger. Jade knew he’d be a goner.

Now, Monday morning, Jade waited for Mama at the bottom of the stairs. She glanced at the grandfather clock in the hall. Eight thirty.

“Mama? You ready?” Jade sounded more impatient than she intended, but her to-do list suddenly felt like an elephant on her back. She had phone calls to make, ads to place, estate sales to scout.