Catherine Palmer - Leaves Of Hope

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?”

“Someone I knew a long time ago. He’s gone, all right? Dead.”

“Dead? Was he my father?”

Her mother’s blue eyes crackled. “John Lowell was your father, Beth, and don’t you ever forget that. He was the best father a girl could ever have. He loved you so much! He did everything for you! He treated you like…like—”

“Like I was his own?”

“Like a princess!”

“Like the queen rose in the rose garden of girls? But that’s not who I was! It’s not who I am! Who am I, Mom?”

“You are Bethany Ann Lowell, and you know it. Now stop all this nonsense. I’m exhausted, and I’m sure you must be, too. Go back to your room and…” She paused. “Better yet, I’ll make you some hot chocolate. You can drink it while I clean up the mess you made in the guest room.”

“Then what? We’ll go to bed and pretend this never happened?” Beth’s jaw clenched. Her mother would try to sweep this under the family rug—Beth just knew it. But not this time. She lifted her chin. “How did my father die?”

“He had ALS. Lou Gehrig’s Disease.”

“I’m not talking about Dad. I mean him. Thomas Wood. When did he die? What happened to him?”

“He wasn’t your father. He was just a man I knew. A college acquaintance. A friend.”

“A boyfriend.”

“Okay, maybe. We dated in college, and then he moved away, and that was that.”

“Except that you were pregnant with me.”

Jan heaved an enormous sigh. “All right, so what if I was? Does that part matter—really? The point is…John and I married, and he raised you as his own precious daughter. He gave you everything you could need, and he loved you dearly. Certainly as much as Billy and Bobby.”