The Almost Sisters(54)
“Why do you have my daughter’s phone? Is she with you?” Jake asked.
“You don’t know? Jesus Christ back at you, JJ,” I said, incredulous. “Why haven’t you called her?”
A pause.
“Rachel told me not to.” Maybe even he heard how pathetic that sounded, because he was talking again before I could answer, defensive. “Anyway, I did go by the house. No one was home. Is Lavender hurt?”
“Of course she is, you douche. All her limbs are still attached, if that’s what you mean, but her dad’s gone missing,” I said. “Every day you spend hiding, that hurt gets deeper and less repairable.”
He made a huffing noise. “It’s complicated.”
I huffed back. “Let me simplify it for you: Call your kid. If you need permission, I am giving you permission. If you need some testicles, I can’t help with that, because it sounds like you let Rachel pack them up and bring them with her down to Birchville. Beg, borrow, or steal, but get a set. Get one, and call your kid. Today. This afternoon. She’ll have her phone back after lunch.”
“They’re both with you in Alabama?” Jake asked. “Are they okay?”
“No. No, they are not. When your most important person ditches you, it feels like he pulled the world out from under your feet and took it with him. It feels like a long, fast fall, and there is no soft landing,” I said, and I wasn’t speaking only for Lav now. I was talking on my own behalf as well, finally defending the kid I’d been back when we were Lay and JJ and everything we did, we did together. Back when he’d screwed me and screwed me over. “It can ruin a kid. Ask me how I know.”
“Are you making this about you?” he asked, trying for incredulous. Trying for disdain, but I could hear a hitch in his breathing.
“Me? No. And it’s not about Lavender or Rachel either. This is about you. This is big-picture stuff,” I told him. “How many times can you do this, JJ? Do you think you have nine lives in you, like a cat? Keep on and you’ll have to change nursing homes when you’re ninety because you screwed over your roommate. Every time you mess up, you stick the people who love you the most with the consequences. Try apologizing. Try making it right. I know firsthand exactly how shitty it feels when you cut and run because you can’t face whatever awful thing you did. I paid for what you did. Every guy I’ve dated since has paid for what you did, and I was only your best friend. This is your wife. This is your own child. If you do this to your child, Oregon is not going to be far enough to let you get away from yourself. Japan won’t be far enough. Mars won’t be. You will have to go all the way to hell to get far enough, and if you don’t call your kid now, if you abandon her without a word like she is nothing, then you deserve to stay there.”
He was definitely crying now, but he didn’t speak. I didn’t either. I had nothing left to say.
I closed the connection, my hands downright shaking. I’d said words to JJ that I’d had rotting in my mouth for twenty years. I felt oddly fresh, almost minty, clean in the wake of saying all those words. I’d wanted to ask him to promise me that he would contact Lavender, but I hadn’t. His promises didn’t mean jack, and his tears didn’t either. He might be feeling sorry for JJ, weeping for poor Jake, and not for Lavender at all. He would call or he wouldn’t. I couldn’t control that. But God, it had felt so good to speak the truth at last, biting into him and chewing like a rattlesnake until my venom sacs were spent and empty.
I wanted to savor it, but a glance at the clock told me I had about six minutes before Birchie and Wattie would be walking out the door. I ran a brush across my tufty bed head and pulled on my voluminous Digby-hiding skirt again. At this point I was pretty much living in this skirt, my sweatpants, and pajamas. I rested my hands on my belly and took three deep breaths to slow my heartbeat. With so much happening, my emotions were a pinwheel, paper light and spun by any wind. Once inside the walls of First Baptist, I could not lose my temper or speak my mind.
I sent a little prayer up toward heaven as I hurried down the hall. Birchie was not herself, and she was walking into the lion’s den of a riled-up small-town Baptist church. I would not let her go without me. Not when she was the one who had riled it.
12
We headed across the road in a tight battle formation. Me and Lavender first, each of us eager to lead the way for our own reasons. Then Wattie and Birchie in their hats and floral dresses and low-heeled shoes, the elderly-southern-lady version of the Armor of the Lord. Rachel, solemn and silent, brought up our rear.
Our bad luck, Martina Mack was standing outside by the door into the sanctuary in her own floral dress, passing out the bulletin. Behind her was the familiar redbrick building with its tall white steeple reaching up into the bright morning sky. When she saw us, her bug-eyed face flashed surprise and then a fervent, ugly joy. She wiped both expressions away so quickly I wasn’t sure anyone else saw. We kept right on coming, and Martina thrust her stack of bulletins at her hench-crone, Gayle Beckworth, who was passing them out on the other side of the doorway. Martina came forward across the wide front porch to meet us at the top of the stairs.
The Grangers and the Lesters were heading inside, but they paused when they saw Martina step to meet us. I could see the Fincher family, walking to church from all the way across the square. Jerry Fincher was the youngest deacon, and his wife had her fingers second-knuckle-deep in every church pie. When they saw us, Polly Fincher picked up her toddler and thrust him into her husband’s arms. Then she sped up so much her baby’s stroller jounced up onto the curb.