Page 81 of Grounded
“Now, don’t worry about that. You had other things on your mind. These last few hours in the kitchen have done me more good than anything.”
“I fell asleep after Cam came over.” Annie sat in a chair, her shoulders sagging as if she carried a fifty-pound feed sack on her back. Beulah knew she had done more than sleep by the looks of her red eyes, but that could go unsaid.
“Couldn’t patch things up with her?” Beulah asked, her back to Annie while she dished out two bowls of green beans and new potatoes.
“You saw her tear out of here. Jake came over right after that and said they’re going back to Cincinnati,” Annie said, her face resting on her closed fist, elbow on the table.
Beulah carefully carried the beans to the table. Annie jumped up. “I’ll get drinks.”
“Silverware too, please.”
Annie set the two glasses of iced tea on the table and went back for the silverware.
“I don’t feel like I know who I am anymore. I’m acting like a crazy person, but Jake is about to make the biggest mistake of his life. Evelyn knows it, you know it, I know it, but Jake doesn’t know it. And he’s the only one that counts.”
The beans were delicious, salty and seasoned with fatback. There was nothing like fresh green beans. Beulah ate slowly, savoring every bite.
“Are you worked up over Jake’s potential mistake or do you think it might go a little deeper than that?”
Annie looked at her grandmother and her eyes filled with tears. “I’ve made a terrible mess of things. I have no right to make it worse.”
Beulah nodded. “I believe it will all work out in the end.”
“How can you be so confident?” Annie asked her, finally eating her beans.
“Because I’m praying and trusting God to work it out,” Beulah said.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Annie finished cleaning the sink, locked the doors downstairs and went up to her bedroom. She rubbed the back of her neck, trying to work out the knotted muscles.Jake wanted to be her boyfriend in high school.Is that what he was telling her?
She sat looking at herself in the mirror of her dressing table, her face washed and her hair pulled back in a headband. Jake had said, “When you chose Brett Bradshaw.”
Her eyes fell on the silver cross lying in her jewelry box. She reached for it and the cross felt cold in her hands, the silver chain soft and delicate. Annie held it up and let it shimmer in the reflection of her ceiling light.
Jake gave it to her the night of her sixteenth birthday. Her grandmother had made a cake with butter cream icing and pink writing that she squirted out of an aerosol can. It was a family dinner that included Evelyn, Charlie and Jake. Her grandfather gave her a hundred dollar bill, with his chuckle. Her grandmother had looked at her sternly and advised that she use it for clothes and not music. Her grandfather had said, “Now, Beulah, it’s her birthday—and she can spend it however she wants.” His eyes twinkled. Annie hugged him, feeling his whiskers scrape the side of her face and smelling the tobacco from his pipe.
Later, she and Jake had walked to the crossover. It was nearly dark, the April days not as long as the days of summer. When she opened the package from Chaney’s Jewelry store, she held her hair up and let Jake clasp the chain around her neck.
“It’s beautiful. I love it.” Annie reached over and hugged Jake as tightly as she could. “Jake, will we always be best friends, even when we’re older?”
“More than best friends,” he said, smiling at first and then getting a serious look on his face. “Do you want to go to the homecoming dance with me?”
“Sure. Who else would I go with?”
But two weeks later, Brett Bradshaw started hanging around her locker between classes. He was on the football team, and she had thought he was cute since the summer before when she saw him at the pool. Never would he have looked her way, she thought, but making the cheerleading squad had changed everything. It was as if a whole new world was opened up to her with the cool kids. She was invited to their parties and included in their circles before school, at lunch and after school.
When Brett asked her to homecoming, she had to calm her voice before saying yes so she didn’t squeak it out like a rusty hinge. She was still smiling when Jake came by a few minutes later. Jake wouldn’t mind, she told herself. He didn’t even like dances; he’d told her that.
But he had seemed to mind. When she told Jake about Brett, he seemed disappointed in her. She thought it was because he didn’t like Brett very well and he was being protective. Now she knew it was more, and in truth, she had known it even then.
Annie lay in bed, unable to sleep. Like letters unread for years, she kept turning memories over in her mind, each one a new revelation in light of what Jake had said.
Their friendship had changed after she started dating Brett. Never before had she realized when the rift started. She’d never really thought about it.
Jake started hanging around the baseball players and a girl named Emily. He became a standout on the baseball team and earned a scholarship to college. In his free time, he worked on the farm with his dad.
Annie hung around a different group in high school where her social life was filled with late-night field parties after the football games. Bourbon mixed with Coke and hooch flowed freely, and everybody felt young and invincible. Her grandmother only let her spend the night with a couple of girls, screening the parents as one can only do in a small town where everybody knows everybody’s relatives and they knew who watched their kids or not.
