Welcome to Serenity by Sherryl Woods Read Free Book Online Page B

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,” her mother said.
    It was only after she’d hung up that she realized her mother hadn’t asked a single question about how she was doing or what was going on in her life. The lack of interest stung, even after all these years. She still recalled a time when she’d run in the backdoor after school, filled with news of her day, and her mother had put cookies and milk on the table and listened to every word. She’d seemed to treasure those afternoon talks as much as Jeanette had. Now they could barely manage a five-minute conversation and most of that one-sided.
    “If I sit here one more minute, I’ll start wallowing in selfpity,” she muttered aloud, grabbing her purse and heading for the door.
    Two hours later she was sitting