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Impossible. No way.
Shaking, Beth got to her feet and gathered up the teapot along with the bubble wrap and the note. This would make sense in a minute. Things would fall into place. The world would come back together.
As Beth stepped out into the living room, the lid clinked against the teapot. “Mom?” she called out. “Mother, where are you?”
Chapter Two
Jan pushed her toes down to the very end of the bed and wiggled them inside her socks. No matter what time of year, her feet were always cold. Her husband had gotten used to it after a while. Sometimes in the night John would roll over, gather her in his arms and let her tuck her feet between his. Even now, two years after his death, she could recall the warmth of his feet seeping through her socks and between her toes. Human warmth. Male warmth. A heating pad or an electric blanket could never replicate that. How she missed him.
Moving to the lake had been a good idea, Jan confirmed to herself once again. She pulled the quilt up to her neck and listened to the utter silence outside her bedroom window. A small neighborhood surrounded her own little cottage, but at this time of night no one stirred. The couple next to her had retired years before. Another widow—in her nineties—lived catty-corner across the street. Few of the homes belonged to permanent residents. Most people came and went on weekends. RVs pulled into driveways. Boats and Jet Skis zipped across the water. Outdoor grills scented the air with barbecue and charcoal. Firecrackers popped, and dogs howled. But by Sunday night, the weekenders had gone away, and the lake resumed its peaceful repose.
Though she hated to admit it, Jan knew she would feel relief when her daughter loaded the rental car and sped away, too. After a sudden change of plans gave her a free weekend, Beth had arrived at the lake house unannounced. Her shoulder-length dark hair slightly mussed from leaning back against an airplane seat, she wore a tight black top, a black skirt that clung to her nonexistent hips and a black jacket. To Jan, none of the fabrics matched, but Beth never noticed details like that. Leather, denim and silk—well, they’re all black, Beth would argue. Despite her annoyance at her mother’s predictability, Beth hadn’t changed much, either. She had always been difficult…so odd and indecipherable.
Her younger brothers were teddy bears—freckled and floppy replicas of their pudgy, amiable father. They laughed, wrestled, accidentally knocked things over, told jokes and rolled along with good-natured ease. Bobby had clowned his way through school and almost succeeded in goofing off his entire college career. Now he held a job with a computer company in Houston, but Jan had little doubt that he was still making everyone around him laugh. Billy had been so easygoing, happy to just hang around his big brother and play with his friends and do his chores. He had just graduated from Texas A&M and was back in Tyler working for one of the rose nurseries.
But as a child, Beth had been a dark-eyed, wiry loner—climbing rock piles or hiding in treetops, building forts out of cardboard boxes, staring at bugs and reading until dawn. She rarely giggled, hated cuddling and deplored the girly aura her mother had tried so hard to create around her. A pink bedroom. A pretty velvet Christmas dress. Dolls. Ribbons. Beth preferred blue jeans, sneakers and a compass or a pair of binoculars.
Off to see the world! That was Beth’s motto—then and now. Jan sighed and rolled over. It wasn’t that she didn’t love her daughter. Nor was she disappointed in the way Beth had turned out. Just the opposite. But why wouldn’t Beth let her come closer? Why was she always pushing away from the slightest touch or snapping out some witty retort? If only they could be friends now that Beth was grown.
“Come to New York,” her daughter had begged. The very thought of it made Jan queasy. A huge city, sidewalks jammed with people, taxi drivers yelling and honking. And terrorists. You could never forget about that possibility.
No, Jan would much prefer to stay here by the lake and work on the portraits she had started. She liked puttering. She enjoyed strolling. Solitude pleased her.
Let Beth and the boys come here. They could watch their mother slide gently into old age, getting creakier and maybe even crankier with time. She would bake her famous cobbler for the neighbors. Paint roses on her walls. Plant petunias, marigolds and roses in her front yard. Maybe she would even stop coloring her hair that familiar auburn shade. What an unexpected thought. Gray at last.
Beth had described her mother as a pill bug. But that wasn’t right. Jan didn’t intend to roll up and hide her head from the world. She simply didn’t need people as much now. She didn’t have to mingle with professors’ spouses or attend PTA meetings or be in the Lady Lions or even go to church. None of that was required.
In fact, Jan hadn’t been to church once in the weeks since she’d moved to the lake. And so what? Who would notice if she never showed up at a worship service? She didn’t need sermons to know what she believed, and she certainly had no desire to walk into a Sunday school room full of strangers. If some church wanted her to be a member, well, let them come find her. God knew where she was, and that was all she cared about.
Turning over again, Jan debated what to do with her daughter for two more days. It wasn’t like Lake Palestine was a dream destination for a single, twenty-five-year-old female. Formed by damming the Neches River, the lake covered 25,000 acres and dropped to fifty-eight feet deep in places. It was a fisher-man’s paradise. Largemouth bass, white and striped bass, channel and blue catfish, crappie and sunfish drew people all year long. The white bass had just completed their spring run up the Neches River and Kickapoo Creek. But Jan didn’t own a boat, and she wasn’t fond of fishing. She and John had often taken their children to the smaller lakes around Tyler. Jan had preferred to sit on the dock and read a book or prepare the picnic lunch while her family fished and swam.
That was what Beth just didn’t understand about her. Jan liked being sedentary. She didn’t want to see the world. Or even New York. The thought of flying to Botswana made her shudder. And as for that poor wife whose husband had dragged her and their children to Colombia to live inside a fortress with armed guards outside—
“Mom?” Beth’s voice down the hall sounded troubled. Instantly Jan threw back the quilt. What was it? A bad dream? A spider?
“Mother, where are you?”
“I’m coming!” Jan stepped into her slippers and started across the room. “Beth, what is it, honey?”
The door swung open, and there stood her daughter holding Thomas Wood’s teapot.
“What is this?” Beth demanded. She could hardly hold back tears. If her mom said the wrong thing…if this was what it seemed…if the note had been true…
“Where did you find that?”
“What is it, Mother?”
“Well, it’s a teapot, of course.” Her mother reached for it. “Give me that, Beth. Where did you get it?”
“You’d better tell me what it is right now, Mother. And don’t even think about taking it away!”
“Don’t use that tone of voice with me, young lady.”
“Mother, where did this teapot come from?” Beth let out a breath, tried to calm herself. “Tell me whose it is.”
Jan crossed her arms over her chest and turned away. “I’m going to put on my robe,” she announced. “And you had better adjust your attitude by the time I’m done.”
“Adjust my attitude? What is this, Mom? Do you think I’m fifteen?” Beth followed her mother toward the rocking chair where the robe lay. “I found this teapot and the note inside it. And I want to know what it means.”
Jan pursed her lips as she pushed her arms into the pink chenille robe, folded the edges over each other and tied the belt into a half-bow at her waist. She walked to the closet, opened the door a hair and shut it again. Then she switched on the lamp beside her bed and adjusted the shade.
“Mother!” Beth stepped to her side and took hold of her arm. “You can’t fidget your way out of this. You can’t deny it. Now sit down and tell me what is going on here. Why was this teapot in my box? What does this note mean? And who is Thomas Wood?”
“Nothing and nobody,” Jan said, dropping onto the edge of her bed. “That’s all you need to know. Nothing and nobody.”
“That’s not true! You wrote this. What does it mean—‘your birth father’?”
“Where did you find that teapot? I told you not to touch any of the boxes in the guest room!”
“You wrote my name on it—’For Beth.’”
“So what if I did? You were not to open anything in the room! Where did you find that box?”
“It was in the closet.”
“In the closet! Were you digging around in my private possessions? Snooping? Is that it?”
“Mom, that is beside the point.”
“It certainly is not. The things in this house are mine, and I told you not to touch any of them. I warned you! I said, ‘Hands off.’ But you didn’t listen. You poked and pried, just like you always do. Getting into things that aren’t any of your business. That box was for later. After I’m gone.”
“You mean dead? You wanted me to wait until you were dead to find this teapot?”
“I put items from your childhood in the box. You don’t need any of them now. They’re just mementos. I should have thrown them all out when I moved.”
“And then I wouldn’t have known. You would have preferred it that way.”
Beth stared at her mother. Jan looked across the room toward the curtained window, her lower lip quivering. “Obviously I did not want you to know anything about it at this time,” she said in a measured tone, as if trying to corral something that was determined to escape. “I put the teapot in the box. I sealed the box. I told you not to get into my things. And you disobeyed me!”
She whirled on her daughter. “You never do what you’re supposed to do, Beth! You think it’s fine to just go wherever you want to go, do whatever you want, act however you please! You don’t care about privacy and silence and decent, normal behavior! I’m sorry I let you come here this weekend. I wasn’t ready for you yet. And now you’ve gone and done this—this thing.”
Beth clutched the china teapot to her belly, wounded by her mother’s accusations, in spite of her determination not to care. She was the one who should be angry—not her mother! Beth had found the note. The secret. She deserved to be furious. But her mother had turned her own guilt into fury, as she always did. And soon the anger would transform into cold, bitter silence.
“Mother, I’m sorry I failed to honor your request not to touch the boxes in the guest room.” Beth sat down in the rocking chair next to the bed. “But you have to tell me what this note means. Is it true?”
Jan reached for a tissue and blew her nose. “I don’t even remember what it says—and don’t read it to me! Just put it back in the teapot. And give that to me. I’ll take care of it.”
“Get rid of it, you mean? No way. It’s mine. You put it in my box. I’m not turning it over to you to throw in the trash.” She spread her fingers over the teapot’s smooth, porcelain shape. “You wrote that Thomas Wood gave you the tea set. Who is he?”
“Someone I knew a long time ago. He’s gone, all right? Dead.”
“Dead? Was he my father?”
Her mother’s blue eyes crackled. “John Lowell was your father, Beth, and don’t you ever forget that. He was the best father a girl could ever have. He loved you so much! He did everything for you! He treated you like…like—”
“Like I was his own?”
“Like a princess!”
“Like the queen rose in the rose garden of girls? But that’s not who I was! It’s not who I am! Who am I, Mom?”
“You are Bethany Ann Lowell, and you know it. Now stop all this nonsense. I’m exhausted, and I’m sure you must be, too. Go back to your room and…” She paused. “Better yet, I’ll make you some hot chocolate. You can drink it while I clean up the mess you made in the guest room.”
“Then what? We’ll go to bed and pretend this never happened?” Beth’s jaw clenched. Her mother would try to sweep this under the family rug—Beth just knew it. But not this time. She lifted her chin. “How did my father die?”
“He had ALS. Lou Gehrig’s Disease.”
“I’m not talking about Dad. I mean him. Thomas Wood. When did he die? What happened to him?”
“He wasn’t your father. He was just a man I knew. A college acquaintance. A friend.”
“A boyfriend.”
“Okay, maybe. We dated in college, and then he moved away, and that was that.”
“Except that you were pregnant with me.”
Jan heaved an enormous sigh. “All right, so what if I was? Does that part matter—really? The point is…John and I married, and he raised you as his own precious daughter. He gave you everything you could need, and he loved you dearly. Certainly as much as Billy and Bobby.”
“But they were his natural children.”
“By birth. Yes, they were. Yet, you were as much John’s natural child as your brothers, Beth. He loved you every bit as deeply. He never showed any preferences. You were his little pumpkin, remember? His ragamuffin. His Bethy-boo.”
“Mother, you know I loved Dad. Nothing will change that. Certainly not this teapot. But why didn’t you tell me about Thomas Wood? Why wasn’t I allowed to know?”
“What for? It made no difference to your daddy and me. Why should you care?”
“Because!” Beth stood and shook her head. “Because I’m different! I’m not the same as the rest of you.”
“That’s ridiculous. Every child is unique. Look at your brothers.”
“Peas in a pod. That’s what Dad used to say. Billy and Bobby, peas in a pod. He never included me.”
“You were a girl.”
“I wasn’t his child.”
Jan exploded up from the bed. “Yes, you were, Beth, and don’t ever let me hear you say such a thing again! You are John’s daughter every bit as much as your brothers are his sons. If you deny that, you deny everything he was!”
“How can you say that?”
“Because he was the man who married me! He did what he didn’t have to do. That’s who John Lowell was—decent, faithful, steady. I could count on him. He never gave me a moment’s doubt about his love for me—or for you, either. The very essence of your father was his willingness to set aside the past and face the future. Did you watch him die?” As she asked the question, Jan’s face hardened. “Oh, I forgot. You were away at college. And then traveling. Colombia and Botswana and places like that. You weren’t here to watch your daddy’s battle.”
“I came home.”
“How often? In his last year, you were home maybe twice.”
“Mother, it was hard to deal with. It was hard to see what was happening to him.”
“Hard to deal with? He didn’t find it hard to deal with the fact that you were another man’s birth child. He didn’t find it hard to deal with his pregnant bride. He accepted all that—just the way he accepted that his disease was going to rob him of every ounce of strength…the ability to talk…even his eyes, at the end. He couldn’t move his eyes, Beth. Did you know that? Because of it, he couldn’t even communicate with me. That brilliant man—silenced by a disease! But he kept on. John pushed forward, never feeling sorry for himself, never looking back. That was your father. That’s who raised you and loved you and gave you everything he had.”
Beth sniffled as she looked down at the teapot in her arms. Why did she feel guilty about even holding the thing? She had been a terrible daughter. And she was even more despicable now that she had opened the box, seen the tea set and read the note.
But she couldn’t help how she felt. She needed to know. Who was the man her mother had named in that cryptic message? What sort of person had given her an ivory, rose-strewn tea set…along with an unexpected baby…?
“Just tell me one thing,” Beth said. “Did he know about me? Thomas Wood?”
“It wouldn’t have made any difference to him. He had his own plans.”
“So you never told him.”
“I hinted. He probably knew. He left anyway.”
“Where did he go?”
“That’s enough, Beth. You don’t need all these details. Let’s go into the kitchen and get some cocoa. Here, give me the teapot.”
Beth clutched it tighter. “It’s mine. You put it in my box.”
“Thomas gave it to me.”
“And you gave it to his daughter. A childhood memento, you said. My childhood. And I’m keeping it.”
“Fine, then.” She flicked her hand in a gesture of disregard as she walked past her daughter. “I don’t care if you keep it. Take the whole box when you leave. Put it into that tiny little roomette you call an apartment.”
“It’s a studio.”
“Whatever.”
Jan could hardly blink back the tears that kept filling her eyes. As she filled the kettle with tap water, she wanted to shout at her daughter. Go away! Just leave me alone! What do you know about anything? You had life handed to you on a silver platter, and it was all thanks to John Lowell.
Oh, John! If only he were here right now. But that would be awful. Thankfully he had died before Beth found the teapot. He would have been crushed to see her reaction—so demanding and curious and stubborn. Hugging that teapot as though it were her own unborn baby. Clinging to it!
Jan sniffled and dug in her robe pocket for a tissue. Why had she even kept that stupid tea set? She should have thrown it out the moment Thomas turned his back on her and walked away. Thomas had professed to love her, but he had no idea what that really meant.
John, with his blond hair and gentle smile…he was the king of true love. He had heard about her predicament in a Sunday school class at church. Jan’s older brother had brought up his pregnant, unwed sister as a “prayer request.” Right. Perfect fodder for the holy gossip mill. But then John had come knocking on her parents’ door, asking if Jan would enjoy going out for ice cream, wondering how she liked her college history class, volunteering to lend her his books for a research paper.
At the time, he had a job as a college teaching assistant while working toward his master’s degree in history at Tyler’s branch of the University of Texas. It wasn’t exactly proper etiquette for John Lowell and Jan Calhoun to date, seeing as he was a teacher and she was a student at the same school. But she hadn’t been in his history class, after all, and he was a friend of her brother’s. In the end, no one from the college seemed to mind, and their awkward first dates quickly turned to love. At least John had fallen in love with Jan. She was still a wreck over Thomas when she agreed to marry.
