“With Dad?”
She cast him a wry look. “Perhaps I should come alone the first time. Scout it out, so to speak.”
“That suits me,” Tom said. If his open-minded mother left with a favorable impression, perhaps she could get through to his father. Their years of marriage had been achieved through an interesting balance of power. His mother, remarkably, wielded most of it.
She bustled from the room and came back with a bulging day planner that he knew was stuffed with business cards from her favorite florists, printers, dressmakers and caterers, along with those from newly opened businesses hoping to capture her attention. She flipped through the pages, muttering under her breath as she did.
“Two weeks from today,” she said at last. “It’s the best I can do. I’ll have to cancel my luncheon and bridge plans, but there’s time enough for them to find a fourth.”
“Two weeks from today will be perfect.” He stood up and bent down to kiss her cheek. “Thank you, Mother. I’ll look forward to it.”
His words were totally sincere. He wanted her to see Serenity as he did, as a lovely town to live in and a place with a promising future. And though he hardly dared to say it to himself, as a stepping stone to an even better job down the road. Contrary to what his father thought, he was not without ambition. He merely planned to take a different path than the one Thomas McDonald had charted for him.
CHAPTER FOUR
Because so many of her best clients were working women who could only come in for treatments on Saturday, Jeanette rarely had an entire weekend to herself. She liked it that way. Sundays seemed endless, especially the ones when she didn’t go to church. The day stretched ahead of her with too many empty hours.
How long could she possibly spend doing laundry or stocking her refrigerator for the few meals she ate at home? Serenity didn’t have a movie theater and she wasn’t interested in golf, kayaking or any of the other activities available in town. It was the one drawback she’d found to living in a small community after spending several years in Charleston. Despite all its other charms and the wonderful people, the peace and quiet of Serenity got on her nerves from time to time, especially with no one special to share her life.
This Sunday seemed worse than most. She had way too much time to think about Christmas and her family and all the reasons the holiday had lost its meaning for her.
By three o’clock she was going a little stir-crazy. She glanced at the phone next to her and thought about how long it had been since she’d spoken to her parents. They lived less than two hours away, but she hadn’t seen or spoken to them in months. After leaving home, she’d soon learned that if she didn’t initiate a call, it wouldn’t happen. It was almost as if they forgot her very existence unless she reminded them.
Impulsively, she picked up the phone and dialed before she could talk herself out of it. It rang several times before her mother picked up.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Jeanette, is that you?”
She wasn’t surprised that her mother wasn’t sure. “Yes, Mom, it’s me. How are you?”
“Doing well enough,” she said, not volunteering anything additional.
Despite the terse response, Jeanette pressed on. “And Dad? How is he?” Her father was nearing seventy, but seemed older. Working outdoors had weathered his skin and what her parents always referred to as “the tragedy” had aged him before his time.
“Working too hard, as always,” her mother replied. “The farm’s too much for him, but it’s the only life he knows.”
“Did he hire any help this year?” Jeanette asked, determined to keep the conversation flowing and hoping to spark even a smidgen of real communication.
“He had several day workers when vegetables were coming in, but he’s let most of them go now that the only crop left is pumpkins. He loads those up himself and takes them to the market on Saturdays.”
“Is he there? I’d like to say hello,” Jeanette said. At one time her father had doted on her the way Cal doted on Jessica Lynn. All that had changed in the blink of an eye, and while she understood the reason on an intellectual level, the chasm between them didn’t hurt any less.
“He’s outside working on the tractor,” her mother replied, not offering to get him. After a slight hesitation, good manners kicked in and she added, “But I’ll tell him you called.”
Jeanette barely contained a sigh. She couldn’t even recall the last time her father had spoken to her. Her mother always had some excuse for why he couldn’t come to the phone. Some rang true, like this one. Others didn’t. Sometimes she thought he’d simply stopped talking to anyone after her brother had died.
Forcing a cheerful note into her voice, she asked, “Tell me what you’ve been doing, Mom. Are you still baking for the church receptions every week?”
“Took a coconut cake in today,” her mother said. “I’ll do chocolate next week. That’s everybody’s favorite.”
“Mine, too,” Jeanette said. “Maybe I’ll drive down for a visit soon and you can bake one for me.”
There was another unmistakable hesitation before her mother said, “You just let us know when you’re coming, Jeanette.”
This time Jeanette didn’t even try to stop her sigh. Just once she’d hoped for some warmth, some sign that her parents missed her and wanted to see her. Instead, her mother sounded more as if she needed to be warned if her daughter was about to appear on the doorstep. Or maybe Jeanette had simply grown too sensitive to the nuances in her mother’s voice. She’d come to expect rejection and found it in every word.
“I’ll let you know, Mom,” she said, resigned to ending another disappointing call. “Good to talk to you.”
“You, too,”
