Leaves Of Hope

Impossible. No way.

Shaking, Beth got to her feet and gathered up the teapot along with the bubble wrap and the note. This would make sense in a minute. Things would fall into place. The world would come back together.

As Beth stepped out into the living room, the lid clinked against the teapot. “Mom?” she called out. “Mother, where are you?”

Chapter Two

Jan pushed her toes down to the very end of the bed and wiggled them inside her socks. No matter what time of year, her feet were always cold. Her husband had gotten used to it after a while. Sometimes in the night John would roll over, gather her in his arms and let her tuck her feet between his. Even now, two years after his death, she could recall the warmth of his feet seeping through her socks and between her toes. Human warmth. Male warmth. A heating pad or an electric blanket could never replicate that. How she missed him.

Moving to the lake had been a good idea, Jan confirmed to herself once again. She pulled the quilt up to her neck and listened to the utter silence outside her bedroom window. A small neighborhood surrounded her own little cottage, but at this time of night no one stirred. The couple next to her had retired years before. Another widow—in her nineties—lived catty-corner across the street. Few of the homes belonged to permanent residents. Most people came and went on weekends. RVs pulled into driveways. Boats and Jet Skis zipped across the water. Outdoor grills scented the air with barbecue and charcoal. Firecrackers popped, and dogs howled. But by Sunday night, the weekenders had gone away, and the lake resumed its peaceful repose.

Though she hated to admit it, Jan knew she would feel relief when her daughter loaded the rental car and sped away, too. After a sudden change of plans gave her a free weekend, Beth had arrived at the lake house unannounced. Her shoulder-length dark hair slightly mussed from leaning back against an airplane seat, she wore a tight black top, a black skirt that clung to her nonexistent hips and a black jacket. To Jan, none of the fabrics matched, but Beth never noticed details like that. Leather, denim and silk—well, they’re all black, Beth would argue. Despite her annoyance at her mother’s predictability, Beth hadn’t changed much, either. She had always been difficult…so odd and indecipherable.

Her younger brothers were teddy bears—freckled and floppy replicas of their pudgy, amiable father. They laughed, wrestled, accidentally knocked things over, told jokes and rolled along with good-natured ease. Bobby had clowned his way through school and almost succeeded in goofing off his entire college career. Now he held a job with a computer company in Houston, but Jan had little doubt that he was still making everyone around him laugh. Billy had been so easygoing, happy to just hang around his big brother and play with his friends and do his chores. He had just graduated from Texas A&M and was back in Tyler working for one of the rose nurseries.

But as a child, Beth had been a dark-eyed, wiry loner—climbing rock piles or hiding in treetops, building forts out of cardboard boxes, staring at bugs and reading until dawn. She rarely giggled, hated cuddling and deplored the girly aura her mother had tried so hard to create around her. A pink bedroom. A pretty velvet Christmas dress. Dolls. Ribbons. Beth preferred blue jeans, sneakers and a compass or a pair of binoculars.

Off to see the world! That was Beth’s motto—then and now. Jan sighed and rolled over. It wasn’t that she didn’t love her daughter. Nor was she disappointed in the way Beth had turned out. Just the opposite. But why wouldn’t Beth let her come closer? Why was she always pushing away from the slightest touch or snapping out some witty retort? If only they could be friends now that Beth was grown.

“Come to New York,” her daughter had begged. The very thought of it made Jan queasy. A huge city, sidewalks jammed with people, taxi drivers yelling and honking. And terrorists. You could never forget about that possibility.

No, Jan would much prefer to stay here by the lake and work on the portraits she had started. She liked puttering. She enjoyed strolling. Solitude pleased her.

Let Beth and the boys come here. They could watch their mother slide gently into old age, getting creakier and maybe even crankier with time. She would bake her famous cobbler for the neighbors. Paint roses on her walls. Plant petunias, marigolds and roses in her front yard. Maybe she would even stop coloring her hair that familiar auburn shade. What an unexpected thought. Gray at last.

Beth had described her mother as a pill bug. But that wasn’t right. Jan didn’t intend to roll up and hide her head from the world. She simply didn’t need people as much now. She didn’t have to mingle with professors’ spouses or attend PTA meetings or be in the Lady Lions or even go to church. None of that was required.

In fact, Jan hadn’t been to church once in the weeks since she’d moved to the lake. And so what? Who would notice if she never showed up at a worship service? She didn’t need sermons to know what she believed, and she certainly had no desire to walk into a Sunday school room full of strangers. If some church wanted her to be a member, well, let them come find her. God knew where she was, and that was all she cared about.

Turning over again, Jan debated what to do with her daughter for two more days. It wasn’t like Lake Palestine was a dream destination for a single, twenty-five-year-old female. Formed by damming the Neches River, the lake covered 25,000 acres and dropped to fifty-eight feet deep in places. It was a fisher-man’s paradise. Largemouth bass, white and striped bass, channel and blue catfish, crappie and sunfish drew people all year long. The white bass had just completed their spring run up the Neches River and Kickapoo Creek. But Jan didn’t own a boat, and she wasn’t fond of fishing. She and John had often taken their children to the smaller lakes around Tyler. Jan had preferred to sit on the dock and read a book or prepare the picnic lunch while her family fished and swam.

That was what Beth just didn’t understand about her. Jan liked being sedentary. She didn’t want to see the world. Or even New York. The thought of flying to Botswana made her shudder. And as for that poor wife whose husband had dragged her and their children to Colombia to live inside a fortress with armed guards outside—

“Mom?” Beth’s voice down the hall sounded troubled. Instantly Jan threw back the quilt. What was it? A bad dream? A spider?

“Mother, where are you?”

“I’m coming!” Jan stepped into her slippers and started across the room. “Beth, what is it, honey?”

The door swung open, and there stood her daughter holding Thomas Wood’s teapot.

“What is this?” Beth demanded. She could hardly hold back tears. If her mom said the wrong thing…if this was what it seemed…if the note had been true…

“Where did you find that?”

“What is it, Mother?”

“Well, it’s a teapot, of course.” Her mother reached for it. “Give me that, Beth. Where did you get it?”

“You’d better tell me what it is right now, Mother. And don’t even think about taking it away!”

“Don’t use that tone of voice with me, young lady.”

“Mother, where did this teapot come from?” Beth let out a breath, tried to calm herself. “Tell me whose it is.”

Jan crossed her arms over her chest and turned away. “I’m going to put on my robe,” she announced. “And you had better adjust your attitude by the time I’m done.”

“Adjust my attitude? What is this, Mom? Do you think I’m fifteen?” Beth followed her mother toward the rocking chair where the robe lay. “I found this teapot and the note inside it. And I want to know what it means.”

Jan pursed her lips as she pushed her arms into the pink chenille robe, folded the edges over each other and tied the belt into a half-bow at her waist. She walked to the closet, opened the door a hair and shut it again. Then she switched on the lamp beside her bed and adjusted the shade.

“Mother!” Beth stepped to her side and took hold of her arm. “You can’t fidget your way out of this. You can’t deny it. Now sit down and tell me what is going on here. Why was this teapot in my box? What does this note mean? And who is Thomas Wood?”

“Nothing and nobody,” Jan said, dropping onto the edge of her bed. “That’s all you need to know. Nothing and nobody.”

“That’s not true! You wrote this. What does it mean—‘your birth father’?”

“Where did you find that teapot? I told you not to touch any of the boxes in the guest room!”

“You wrote my name on it—’For Beth.’”

“So what if I did? You were not to open anything in the room! Where did you find that box?”

“It was in the closet.”

“In the closet! Were you digging around in my private possessions? Snooping? Is that it?”

“Mom, that is beside the point.”

“It certainly is not. The things in this house are mine, and I told you not to touch any of them. I warned you! I said, ‘Hands off.’ But you didn’t listen. You poked and pried, just like you always do. Getting into things that aren’t any of your business. That box was for later. After I’m gone.”

“You mean dead? You wanted me to wait until you were dead to find this teapot?”

“I put items from your childhood in the box. You don’t need any of them now. They’re just mementos. I should have thrown them all out when I moved.”

“And then I wouldn’t have known. You would have preferred it that way.”

Beth stared at her mother. Jan looked across the room toward the curtained window, her lower lip quivering. “Obviously I did not want you to know anything about it at this time,” she said in a measured tone, as if trying to corral something that was determined to escape. “I put the teapot in the box. I sealed the box. I told you not to get into my things. And you disobeyed me!”

She whirled on her daughter. “You never do what you’re supposed to do, Beth! You think it’s fine to just go wherever you want to go, do whatever you want, act however you please! You don’t care about privacy and silence and decent, normal behavior! I’m sorry I let you come here this weekend. I wasn’t ready for you yet. And now you’ve gone and done this—this thing.”

Beth clutched the china teapot to her belly, wounded by her mother’s accusations, in spite of her determination not to care. She was the one who should be angry—not her mother! Beth had found the note. The secret. She deserved to be furious. But her mother had turned her own guilt into fury, as she always did. And soon the anger would transform into cold, bitter silence.

“Mother, I’m sorry I failed to honor your request not to touch the boxes in the guest room.” Beth sat down in the rocking chair next to the bed. “But you have to tell me what this note means. Is it true?”

Jan reached for a tissue and blew her nose. “I don’t even remember what it says—and don’t read it to me! Just put it back in the teapot. And give that to me. I’ll take care of it.”

“Get rid of it, you mean? No way. It’s mine. You put it in my box. I’m not turning it over to you to throw in the trash.” She spread her fingers over the teapot’s smooth, porcelain shape. “You wrote that Thomas Wood gave you the tea set. Who is he?”