Teresa Hill - Someone To Watch Over Me

They’d huddled around Jax then, little stair-step girls, all blond and blue-eyed and innocent. Kim had sucked her thumb. Kathie had taken to hiding in Jax’s closet at night until she thought he was asleep and then creeping over to sleep on the floor by his bed. Katie started making lists.

So this was all familiar territory. Dreaded, but familiar.

He got the girls on their feet and by his side, and then there was just the dog. Jax was afraid he’d have a fight on his hands, but Romeo seemed to understand. He took his turn nuzzling her cheek and whining over her, and then jumped off the bed and stood quietly by Jax’s side.

“Good dog,” Kim said, stooping over to hug Romeo and then wrapping her arm around Jax’s waist.

He took the dog’s leash. Kathie leaned into his other side, her head on his shoulder, and Katie linked her arm with Kathie’s.

“Okay. Ready?” he asked.

“We should say a little prayer,” Kathie said. “Mom would like that.”

“Okay,” Jax said.

They could say anything they wanted, as long as they left. He bowed his head with the rest of them, and Kim did it. She started off by thanking God for their mother and ended with something that sounded vaguely like a threat, a take-good-care-of-her-or-else thing.

Or else what?

Katie raised her head and gave her sister an odd look.

“Well, He’d better take care of her,” Kim said. “All those prayers she said. All the ones people said on her behalf. And she’s still gone.”

“It’s okay,” Jax said. None of them were particularly religious, except their mother, and he understood exactly how Kim felt. “Now we go.”

They pivoted around as best they could without letting go of each other and trooped out.

Two of their mother’s friends were outside the door, one crying. One of her neighbors was standing there holding fresh flowers. At the nurses’ station, three women stood staring, sad, understanding expressions on their faces. Jax looked down at the floor, and then looked away. He just didn’t have anything left, not for anyone.

The girls pulled themselves together and thanked their mother’s friends for all their kindness during her illness and over the years. They thanked each and every one of the nurses on the floor, showing all the graciousness and kindness their mother had taught them. She would have been proud. His sisters could be a little flaky, each in her own way, but they were strong, smart women, good down to the core.

Their mother had loved them well.

She’d loved Jax, too. Completely. Powerfully. Joyously.

But she’d been disappointed in him, too. He knew that.

She’d said it, right there at the end, in that jumble of thoughts where she’d believed she’d seen his father again.

And it wasn’t as if it was a surprise that she was disappointed in him. She thought he was playing at life, wasting it, letting it slip through his fingers. That he had no faith. Not just in the God she trusted so completely, but in other people as well.

In life and in love.

Losing his father hadn’t weakened her faith in either of those things. Nothing had.

So where had it come from? he wondered. The trust? The faith? The hope?

He trusted that life would hurt him sooner or later, that people would disappoint him and disappear, had faith that there was nothing more to this world than what he could see with his eyes and touch with his hands.

And yet he wanted to believe what she’d said, that she’d watch over him, even now. That his father had been waiting for her, even after all this time, and God had come for her, taken her by the hand and led her…. Wherever it was that people went. That nothing hurt her anymore, and she’d never even be sad or miss him and his sisters or her silly dog.

That’s what he wanted to believe.

But he didn’t.

So once more, he gathered up his poor, brokenhearted sisters and the dog. Arm in arm, they walked out of the place where they’d lost their mother.

Gwendolyn Moss dragged herself out into the midday sunshine in the town park across from Petal Pushers, the bright, cheery flower shop where she worked.

On the north end of the park, on a bench beneath a huge, sprawling oak and a cluster of magnolias, she sat and ate the sandwich she’d packed that morning, all the while trying her best not to be afraid.

It was high noon, sunshine raining down through the branches of the trees, dappling the ground with spots of light among the lazy shadows. The temperature was a perfect, balmy seventy degrees with an ever-so-slight breeze, and the park was smack-dab in the middle of a small picturesque, Southern town.

No one was going to grab her and drag her off into a dark corner because there were no dark corners here. Gwen had made sure of that. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have come outside.

She sat off on the fringes of the park, keeping to herself but careful not to stray too far from the crowds, even in broad daylight.

There was a playground a little off to the right, where mothers gathered to gossip while their children pushed each other on the swings and climbed into the tree fort, athletic fields to the south where adults and children alike played and friends clustered around to watch them.

Magnolia Falls Park was shaped like a crescent moon that ran from the north to the south end of town, all along the west side, following the path of and surrounding Falls Creek. For the most part, the creek was not much more than a wide, shallow stream of water rushing over a slick, smooth, sloping rock face. But to the south, still surrounded by parkland, the creek bed dropped all of thirty feet over a quarter of a mile, into a wide, rounded pool of water surrounded by a dozen magnolia trees, forming Magnolia Falls, for which the park and the town was named.

It was especially pretty there, and Gwen liked the soothing noise the rushing water made, but for now she preferred her little corner on the fringes of the park. It was farther than she’d have come just a month or so ago. So this was progress of sorts.

There was sunshine on her face and her bare arms, heat when for so long she’d been so cold, light when for so long she’d hidden in darkness, air when at times she’d found it hard to even breathe.

As she munched on her sandwich, she eyed a bench closer to the playground. Maybe next week or next month, when the sun was even hotter and more pleasant, she’d lunch there and not be afraid.

Finishing her lunch, she crumpled up her napkin, put it in her little brown bag and tossed the whole thing into a nearby garbage can, then set off around the far western perimeter of the park, toward the flower shop where she’d worked for the past three months.

There were towering trees, oaks, pines, a willow here and there, in addition to the magnolias, walking paths, playing fields, a playground, an amphitheater and just about anything else anyone had been able to think of. The park hosted outdoor arts festivals, music festivals, kids’ festivals, garden shows, town celebrations, all sorts of things. It seemed any excuse to fill the park with people was welcomed.

Gwen was going to attend one of those festivals one day. For now, she watched a baby in a stroller throw a fit and fling her rattle onto the sidewalk, then cry and pout when she didn’t get the toy back after the mother picked it up.

Pretty, yellow tulips edged the sidewalk that must have just burst into bloom, and there were leaves in that brand-new green of spring slowly unfurling on the trees. Tiny baby squirrels chattered and scampered about. Birds were raising a ruckus in the trees.

Two kids squabbled loudly and vehemently over a ball, a disagreement that quickly led to shoving and parental intervention. Gwen actually grinned at that.