Winter's Child

7

Even winter produces flowers, for all that it seems to be un-productive by reason of the cold.

—Theophrastus

When Dwight called to tell me about the rotten trick Jonna had played on him after leaving Cal alone overnight—and what the hell was that all about?—

I was more annoyed than concerned. Yes, she was Cal’s custodial parent. Yes, she had the right to leave her own house and take Cal with her if she wanted to.

But to do it without a word to Dwight?

That was spiteful bitchiness pure and simple, a power play executed for no reason I could see except to rub his nose in the fact that she legally could.

Domestic court is full of vindictive parents who play the children off against their ex-spouses, who try to wedge them apart, who poison those young minds against the noncustodial parent. Male and female both, across the whole economic strata, but I didn’t think Jonna was like that.

Not that I’ve ever met the woman. In fact, the only picture I’ve even seen of her was in a stack of snapshots Cal took when someone gave him a disposable camera a 7 couple of birthdays ago. Honesty compels me to admit that she is a beautiful woman with blue-violet eyes, dark curly hair, and beautifully arched eyebrows. Happily, the only physical feature Cal seems to have inherited from her is the shape of her eyebrows. I can live with those eyebrows because everything else about Cal seems to be Dwight, from his dark brown eyes to his tall-for-his-age build.

During those years after Dwight came back to Colleton County and started pretending he was just another of my many brothers—“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”—he was a handy arm when I was without an escort, a comforting shoulder to cry on after an affair went sour, an ear for listening while I trashed the men who didn’t walk the line or live up to my expectations.

Every once in a while, though, I’d feel guilty about the imbalance and I’d ask him about his love life, about Cal, about his defunct marriage.

Cal he would always talk about.

Current entanglements? He didn’t kiss and tell.

His first marriage? All he ever said was, “Jonna just didn’t want to be married anymore. My fault probably.”

And that was it until last month, three or four nights before our wedding, in a week where we’d been given way too many parties and had way too much to drink.

Lying together beneath the quilts in the darkness of our new bedroom, I told him about my abortive marriage to a good-for-nothing car jockey and he told me about Jonna’s snobbery, how she’d decided on her own to get pregnant, and how she seemed to resent the bond between Cal and him.

“I never loved her half as much as I love you, and I didn’t love her at all when we made Cal, but the minute I saw that first sonogram? The day I first held him? I don’t know, Deb’rah. It was like she had given me this amazing gift I didn’t even know I wanted.”

A corrosive rush of jealousy swept over me that she had been there first, that she was the mother of the child he adored, that she would always be special for that reason alone. I could give him a dozen children and I knew he would love them all, but none of those hypothetical children would call up that never-to-be-duplicated primal response of holding his firstborn. This was cold hard reality and nothing could change it.

Ever.

The best I could do was swallow my jealousy and accept it. “Cal really is the best thing that’s ever happened to you, isn’t he?”

“Till now,” he’d agreed, stroking my bare shoulder as we lay entwined.

Happiness bubbled up then and washed away my jealousy. Jonna might have been Dwight’s first, but so what?

I was going to be his last, and I’d had enough bourbon to be generous with his heart. “You don’t have to rank us.”

He had laughed then, a low chuckle of drowsy contentment. “I know I don’t. That’s another reason I love you so much.”

So, yes, I was pissed at Jonna when Dwight called me that first time. The second time, when he told me that his friend—his friend, for pete’s sake!—had asked if there was a reason for Jonna to fear him, I was beyond pissed.

I was ready to drive to Shaysville and slap the entitlement right off her smug little face.

“She may not be afraid of you, but she’d better damn well be afraid of me. I’ll unleash Portland, okay? She’s great at getting custody agreements amended or set aside. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t have custody of Cal now.”

“Whoa!” he said. “Slow down, shug. Let’s wait and see how this plays out first. There may be something going on that we don’t know about.”

I hate it when he’s logical.

He promised to keep me up to speed and I reluctantly let him go.

That didn’t mean I was going to let the whole situation go, though.

Portland’s been my best friend forever and we’ve always shared everything—well, most everything—from the time we were two small girls that the adults usually tried to separate because of the mischief we could get into together.