“Did you ask him to stay?”
“I didn’t want to have to ask. So no. He left and I watched him go.” She hadn’t meant to tell him the whole story, but once she started talking, the story flowed.
“What’d you do?”
“I called my sister in the middle of the night. I hadn’t told her I was pregnant, so it was a bit of a shock. But Betsy just . . .” Jenna paused, remembering the silence on the phone when she blurted out the news to Betsy with no warning. “I know she wanted to say a lot, but she didn’t. She just showed up at my door the next night with a car full of diapers and baby gear and stayed until a couple weeks after Addie was born.”
“You have two kids though, right?”
She ran her hands across the smooth counter surface and nodded.
As luck would have it, she ran into Jeremy again soon after moving to Nashville. She hadn’t talked to him in over a year so she didn’t know he’d moved there to work with a new studio. He was happy to see her—and Addie—and Jenna desperately wanted her child to know her father.
“Deep down I knew he couldn’t have changed much, but I ignored that instinct and we gave it a shot anyway. It was good at first—the three of us together. But then I let my guard down. In every way.” She peered at Gregory to see if he understood. “Who would have thought I’d get pregnant a second time?”
She rubbed her eyes. “That pretty much ended things. He made himself scarce, and I just let him slide out of the picture again. It was easier that way. Well, it wasn’t easy, but at least I wasn’t trying to force something that obviously wasn’t supposed to work.”
It was quiet in the room. Too quiet. She wanted him to say something, but he was silent.
She laughed to cut the tension. “Clearly I have terrible taste in men and have no business trying to date anyone.”
Gregory shook his head and rubbed his cheek. “Geez, kid. You’re breaking my heart here.”
She stood up straighter and brushed her hair back from her face. “That was a very long answer to your question, but that’s why I’m not married. I might have said yes if he’d asked, but it’s probably better for all of us that he didn’t.”
He nodded. “If he had, you might not be here.”
“True,” she said, then pushed off the counter and turned to the trays, cutting off more questions and any possible sympathy she didn’t deserve. “Are they ready yet?”
It was a moment before he spoke. Finally, he stood next to her. “Pull them out and let’s see what we have.”
She gripped the edge of the first photo, holding it a moment to let the last of the water drip off, then clipped it to the wire. One by one, she lifted the photos and hung them up to dry. When she’d clipped all twelve photos, she stood back and studied them.
Not terrible, just like she’d hoped. New, vibrant life pushing against the barren and wasted. Promise seeping into the dark places. Not terrible at all.
“See what you did? You were patient. Rather than shooting the first scene you came to, you waited until you saw something of worth. And because of that, I see it too.” He moved down the line. “Without color as a distraction, the contrast between light and dark is the focus. Look at the pattern here on the leaves.” He pointed to the repeating stripes on a palm branch. “You angled the shot just right to draw our eye here. And this one—this one is different.”
He paused in front of a shot Jenna took of one of the other artists, Terry, standing under a towering oak, his face tipped up and just catching the light. “Adding the human element here increases the emotional impact of the scene. It also gives us some perspective as to just how massive the tree is.” He turned to her in the dim light. “How do you feel about these?”
She heard the smile in his voice, and she smiled too. “Good. I feel good.”
“I think you’ve found your place, kid. You did all this. Own it. Enjoy it.”
eighteen
Ty
Between an important South Alabama Dairy Farmers’ Association meeting, working with Carlos to keep the pump from giving out again, and a weekend lightning storm that temporarily took out power to the milking barn, it was early the next week before Ty could take a breather.
Roger Daily had his grandchildren for a few days, and not knowing what to do with three kids underfoot, he brought them to Ty’s place to play with Addie and Walsh. His wife, Linda, came too, the five of them piling out of Roger’s ancient blue-and-white truck like clowns at a circus. Addie and Walsh were playing on the big swing when the Dailys arrived, and the grandkids ran straight for them.
Roger trudged over to where Ty stood next to the fence of the holding pen. He took off his cap and brushed his hands through his stiff white hair. “I can take ’em for a few hours, but all weekend?” He laughed a little. “Little ones just wear me out.”
“I know what you mean,” Ty said with a smile, although he didn’t really know. Being so busy in the barn, the burden of keeping up with the girls had fallen mostly on Betsy’s shoulders. Not that they were
