Softly and Tenderly (17 page)

I know her. I know her
. Swallowing, brushing her hair from her eyes, Jade stared straight ahead, out the windshield.

The impatient little car honkity-honked and whipped around Jade into the passing lane. What was wrong with people?

Cold air filled the Caddy’s open chassis, swirling around Jade’s head and feet. She was going to need to stop for more clothes. And gloves. Definitely gloves. Where’d she put the toque June had brought?

Hot air cranking from the heater barely made it past the dash. The heated seat only warmed a certain section of Jade’s body that didn’t really need to be kept warm.

The image of the hitchhiker stuck to her soul, lingering like the memory of a long-lost friend. Even more, the imprint of the girl’s spirit reflected something so deep and real to Jade, she felt as if she were seeing herself from another era.

Or Mama.

Pressing harder on the gas, Jade wrestled with the urge to turn around. First of all, she wasn’t
Mama
. Second of all, a hitchhiker in today’s world? Nothing doing. Not when Jade was alone. Turn around based on sentimental musings and end up with a knife in her gut.

A streak of sunlight cut through the pile of gray clouds, but its warmth was a long way off. Jade wasn’t a risk taker. Not much anyway. She’d researched vintage shops and small businesses for two years before even considering a property hunt for the Blue Umbrella.

Baby sister Willow took chances. She leaped first and thought second when she accepted the medical trip opportunity to Guatemala. Mama always said she was the kite in the wind. But Jade was the roots in the ground.

Picking up a hitchhiker wasn’t her thing. Maybe Willow’s, even Aiden’s. Definitely Mama’s. Jade had a front-row seat to Mama’s wild side. Watching her weekend tent parties from her second-story window. Enduring her affinity for husbands. Grinning behind her hand when Granny scolded Mama’s zest for life. Tucking into her ribs the day she picked up a wanderer on the side of the road . . .

“Jade-o. Aiden. Let’s go find us a hill somewhere.” Mama’s voice wound up the stairs and echoed down the hall.

Jade jumped up, nearly falling off her bed, cradling her book against her chest. Her heart thumped in her chest.
Mama, don’t go yelling down the hall
.

“Jade-o . . . sledding.”

She didn’t want to go sledding. She peered out her bedroom window, the fat flakes falling from the soupy clouds and blanketing the earth in a thick white that looked downright cold.

Mama knocked on her door, then pushed it open. “Bookworm, let’s go.”

“I want to read.” Jade offered her open book to Mama. “Miss Godwin said I’m in third place in the reading contest. If I read an extra book a week, I might beat everyone in the whole school. Even sixth graders.”

“Well, Miss Godwin ain’t your mama, and I say it’s time for some fun and exercise.” Mama reached for Jade’s book. “Anne Rice? A vampire novel? Where did you get this?”

“Rachel’s mama had it in the throwaway pile.”

“If Granny saw you with this, she’d have a fit. Now come on, get your gloves and boots on. Hurry, hurry, hurry.” Mama tossed the book onto the bed. “Don’t come crawling in bed with me if you have a nightmare.” In the hall, Mama called Aiden again. “Let’s go, boy.”

Jade stuck out her tongue, quick though, because she didn’t want Mama to see. As mad as she could make Jade, she hated to see Mama hurt.

Sighing and crawling off the bed, Jade flipped the pages of her book. Why would a book give her nightmares? And why would Granny have a fit? She liked when Jade read. Closing the book, she tucked it under her bed and decided to return it to Rachel’s house after school. The risk of nightmares and Granny’s wrath was too great.

The library had plenty of stories she wanted to read. Jade opened her bottom drawer for her gloves and hat. She always read in the afternoon, after homework. Granny brought up hot cocoa, marshmallows, and graham crackers on a tray.

But when Mama came home from one of her trips with her friends or from a long run for Midwest Parcel, she made it her duty to mess up everyone’s schedule.

Granny said let her be. It made her feel like she was being a good mother.

“I’m going to put the sleds in the truck.” Mama poked her head around the door. “Don’t forget your gloves.”

Jade sighed as loud as she could, just so Mama would know she’d rather be reading. She’d never won a prize before, and she wanted this one so bad she could taste it. She’d have one trophy to Aiden’s ten.

Aiden flopped onto Jade’s bed. “Word is you might win the reading contest.” He was in fourth grade, and even though he read as many books as Jade, he didn’t tell his teacher.

“I’m trying.”

“You can send a picture of your ribbon to Daddy.”

Jade faced him, eyes wide, heart dancing. “Why would he want to see it?”

Aiden shrugged. “He always likes it when I show him my baseball trophies.”

“I want to go to Washington to see him in the summer.” Jade jammed her foot into her wooly duck boots, then yanked up the laces.

“Me too.”

“Is he mad at us?”

“I think he’s still mad at Mama.”

A snowball pelted the bedroom window. Jade and Aiden squished into the mattress, then crawled to the window to peer down.

“Come on, you
snow
pokes.” Mama lobbed another snowball at the window, laughing. She dropped to the ground, swinging her arms and legs up and down. “I’m a snow angel.”

Aiden looked back at Jade. “That’s as close as Mama’s ever going to get to being an angel.”

Jade snickered and snorted, then popped her brother’s shoulder. “You’re mean.”

“She’s the one who says she’s bound for hell.” He rolled off the bed.

“Just to make Paps and Granny mad.” Mama wouldn’t go to hell, would she? Jade heard talk of hell in Sunday school, with visions of fire and the devil haunting the sinners.

“Jade, Aiden.” Mama’s voice was muffled by the cold window. “Let’s go . . .”

“Last one down’s a rotten egg.” Aiden dashed out of the room before Jade caught the last of his challenge.

“Cheater.” Jade bolted through the door wrapping her scarf around her neck.

Crammed into the cab of the truck, Mama blasted the heater and cranked the radio as she drove through the snowplowed lanes of Highway 117 toward Newton and the good sledding hills.

Ten minutes down the road, as Mama rounded a bend, a dark figure appeared on the horizon. A man. Hooded. Alone. His dark silhouette scary against the white horizon. He could be a vampire, looking for lunch . . . Jade’s heart raced when Mama slowed down the truck.

“Aiden, roll down your window.”

“No, Mama.”

“Roll it down, come on now.” Mama cranked her hand in the air.

With a huff, Aiden obeyed. Big flakes drifted into the truck through the open window.

“Is that your car broken down back there?”

The stranger peered in the window. “Ran out of gas. Thought I had enough to make it to Newton.” When he glanced at Jade, she ducked behind her brother.

“We’re heading that way. Want a lift?”

“Mom?” Aiden glared at her. Jade knew what he was thinking. Paps said never to ride with a stranger. Or go with a stranger to a house or building.

The stranger looked at Aiden. “I can walk, really.”

“Walk? It’s another ten miles to Newton. It’s cold and snowing. Aiden, move over.” Mama reached across Jade and hooked her hand around Aiden, pulling him away from the door.

They were going to die. Jade imagined her red blood soaking the new snow.

He
was in the truck. Jade’s middle tightened as the door clapped closed. She burrowed into Mama, who frowned and elbowed her out of the way. “I can’t drive with you burrowing into me like that.”

“So, sledding?” The man sounded nice. His smile was cool. Lots of teeth. Her friend Rachel said people with big teeth might be vampires. Yep, they were going to die. “There’s enough snow for it. Where do you go? Sunset Park?”

“They have the best hills around here. It’s nothing like out west, like Colorado,” Mama said, shifting the gears of the truck. “But we have some laughs, don’t we, kids?”

“I’m Ryan.” The man nodded at Mama, then Jade and Aiden.

Mama crossed her arm in front of Jade to shake his hand. “Beryl. These are my kids, Aiden and Jade.”

Aiden muttered hello. Jade said nothing, but gave him a good once-over with her eyes. Now that he was closer, Jade decided he looked like the teenagers she observed when Granny took her to Sunday school.

“You’re welcome to come sledding with us. I brought an extra sled.” Mama motioned to the back of the truck. “There’s always someone on the hill in need of a sled.”

“I have to call my dad first about my car, but sure.”

Mama smiled at all three of them. “Perfect.”

A cold, wet drop of snow hit Jade’s forehead. She left behind the memory of riding in the truck with Mama, Aiden, and Ryan.

Beyond the windshield, snow drifted down from opaque-bottom clouds in true solidarity with the Weather Channel’s prediction and dusted the Kentucky highway.

Jade didn’t have many favorite childhood memories, but sledding with Ryan was one of them. After her first swoop down the hill on her sled, she’d forgotten all about vampires and oozing blood in the snow.

Those were the final moments before Mama really went wild and disappeared for months on end. Before she married Willow’s daddy, Mike Ayers. Before husbands three and four: Gig the musician and Bob the accountant.

Ryan turned out to be the seventeen-year-old son of Newton’s mayor, who treated all of them to dinner and hot chocolate at Maid Rite.

Cautious Aiden ended up following Ryan around like a lost puppy, eager to be accepted by the teen. On the way home, Mama nudged him. “Connections that change your life just might be standing on the side of the road.”

It always bothered Jade that Mama’s careless prediction turned true. Ryan ended up as a friend and mentor of Aiden’s. His love of art and photography transformed Aiden’s sometimes-hobby into a fascination and lifetime pursuit. They were friends to this day.

Connections that change your life just might be standing on the side of the
road
.

Jade barely made the exit. She swerved the big Caddy off I-24, kissing the berm, laying on the brakes. The beast took a good bit of road to slow down.

This was nuts. Jade shivered, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel as she waited at a stop sign for a slow moving truck to gear up and move on.

Picking up a hitchhiker? Insane. But now that she was in motion to turn around, Jade had to go back. She had to see her. Talk to her.

Maybe there was a piece of Mama in the girl. Something Jade needed to see.

Backtracking down I-24, Jade shoved aside all fear. She was tired of living in fear. Tired of seeing evil in what God called good. Seeing a vampire in a big-toothed teen. Most of all, something in her gut told her she needed to peek at the eyes of the hitchhiker and see her soul.

Good thing about a ’66 Fleetwood Eldorado? The car could book. Jade hung on to the wheel with both hands as she careened south on I-24, finally swerving onto the Hinkleville Road exit, wrangling the beast back from seventy to thirty-five.

Caught at the exit-ramp light, jitters slithered across Jade’s belly. The light flashed green in the next second, and Jade shot off the line, only to be caught by a red light under the overpass. But now she could see the northbound ramp, and the girl was still there. Waiting.

Cool anticipation shivered beneath her skin. Jade sensed something divine in play, as if she might gaze into a mirror and suddenly have clarity.

What would she say to her? Want a ride? Hop in? Surely she’d remember Jade from fifteen minutes ago.

The girl stood with her shoulders hunched up as she did a little keep-warm hop. She’d zipped up her jacket and smashed a blue wool cap on her head. The same invisible thread between them from the first passing tugged the girl’s attention toward Jade again. Their eyes locked.

This time Jade didn’t duck. Instead, she rose over the windshield and waved.
Hey, I’m coming. I’m coming
.

The hitchhiker waved, smiled, even seemed eager for Jade to come. As if she’d been waiting . . . for her.