And, Ro-Bay … who had family of her own, but who had made Miss Justine’s—and mine—as much hers as those who shared her bloodline.
Mama … who frustrated me often but comforted me more. Just her presence in a room brought all that it should.
Julie … a grandmother five times over. She and Dean remained in Nashville, Dean now retired, Julie still the quintessential and contented homemaker. She’d sure lived a happy life for someone who married a “bum.”
DiAnn … brilliant businesswoman who had become my unlikely ally. My sister-in-law in the truest sense. My friend, even more so.
And Michelle … my daughter. My world. My unique and special gift. From Westley.
And so it was that, sometime many days and weeks and months later, Michelle found me sitting in the silence of an afternoon made gray with rain. I’d been listening earlier to one of my Pandora radio stations—Simon and Garfunkel—but had since turned it off, wrapped so tightly in a memory I almost couldn’t breathe.
That’s the thing about music; it evokes both the brightest and darkest of emotions tied to the happiest and saddest of times.
“Hey … what are you doing?” she asked, flipping on a table lamp. “Did you forget how to turn on a light?”
I shook my head, knowing the telltale signs of my tears would give away the state of my unusual mood. Since reaching an older, hopefully wiser, age, I’d not been one to dwell too much on the negative, but today I allowed myself the luxury of it.
“Mom? Hey—this isn’t like you.”
I blinked. Looked up to the concern on her face. “Sorry, sweet pea. Just … I heard a song earlier and …”
She walked around my chair—she was still dressed in her work clothes, her hair still pulled up in a messy bun—and took a seat across from me. “Did the song get you to missing Dad? Is that it?”
My smile wobbled. “Something like that.”
Michelle rested her elbows on her knees, her keys dangled from her fingers until she clasped them in her palm. “Want to tell me about it?”
I shrugged. Did I? At her young age, would she understand what I had to say? Did I even have a grasp on the cascade of sentiments flooding over me? Through me?
“Okay, how about I help you out … what was the name of the song?” she asked, encouraging.
“Dust,” I began, then swallowed and glanced at the floor. “‘Dust in the Wind.’”
“Oh, yeah. Yeah. I know that song. Kansas. Mid-to-late seventies.”
Startled, I looked across the room and caught her gaze. “You know Kansas?”
She chuckled. “I lived with Cindie for a while, remember?”
I nodded, no longer bristling at the mention of a name so tightly wound with my past and the man I had married. “What does she have to do with it?”
“Patterson. The man knew everything about music and musicians. He also thought he had to teach everyone what he knew. So, thanks in part to him, I learned about everything from classics to country, rock to the great jazz musicians.” Her green eyes widened. “Ask me anything about Mozart. Or the Grand Ole Opry. Or Hank Garland.” She pointed toward me. “Or Dylan. Lord help us, that man loved Dylan.” Her eyes rolled. “He also played a lot of Sinatra, which I still love, and Fleetwood Mac and, well, Kansas.”
Her attempt at humor only mildly consoled me. I said nothing.
“Sorry,” she finally said. “So … ‘Dust in the Wind.’”
I would tell her, I decided. I would share this special moment in my life she had not been privy to. “Your father and I were on our way from Uncle Paul and Aunt DiAnn’s to Miss Justine’s for the first time. We were in his old Caprice convertible—”
“I remember that car. Blood red. He had that until I turned—what—about eight?”
I laughed lightly. “Yes. About that.” I took a breath. Worked my fingers, picking at a cuticle until it turned red with anger, then moved my hand over the pearl bracelet I’d worn since Michelle gave it to me as a teenager. “That song came on the radio and … I remember asking your father if he thought that it was true. About us only being dust in the wind.”
“And what did he say?”
I chuckled at the memory. “He quoted from the Bible.”
“For dust you are and to dust you will return.”
Again, she surprised me. “How did you know?”
“Well, I didn’t think it would have anything to do with sackcloth and ashes,” she answered with a grin. “Or offspring being as numerous as the dust of the earth. That sort of thing.”
I could only stare in wonder. “How did you get to be so smart?”
Her smile curled naturally. “I had two pretty sharp parents.” Then she waited, but when I said nothing, she continued. “So, the song made you think about that day with Dad?”
“No,” I answered honestly. “That song made me think about me. Question my worth. My value. My purpose for having ever been born. I honestly—I honestly don’t think I ever knew …” A pitiful chuckle escaped me. “…what I wanted to be when I grew up.”
“Mom …”
The tears threatened again. “I’m sorry, Michelle. But I—I’ve just been thinking, is all. I mean, maybe losing your dad … and then my breasts … and the gamut of emotions that goes along with that … and the move here … and … and getting old and then everything we all went through when the country shut down and all that happened afterward … just everything. I mean, what will I leave behind when I die? I’m certainly too old to do any great, monumental thing now. And I keep thinking that all anyone will ever be able to say about me, other than that I was a fairly decent person, is that I married Westley, moved across Georgia to Odenville, and entered some numbers into ledgers day in
