Glory Road Read online

I picked my bag up from the floor. As I pushed open the door, I kept my face turned away from him. “Let me know about the computer?”

  “I will. Thanks for tagging along with me tonight.”

  “Anytime.”

  As the wet slurp of his tires retreated down the road, I stood rooted in the driveway, paused between my past and my present. A tap on the glass behind me brought me back to reality. I turned to see Mama in the front window holding her hands up in her classic, “What on God’s green earth is going on with you?” stance. I took a deep, cleansing breath and shook my hair out of my face.

  “Sorry,” I said when I pushed the door open. “Come on, I’ll take you home.”

  “I can walk just fine. I just wanted to wait ’til you got back before I left. Evan’s in her room.”

  “Thanks for staying.”

  “Mm-hmm.” She brushed past me and out the door. On the porch she stopped. “How’s Ben doing?”

  “He seems okay.” I turned and craned my head to see if Evan’s light was still on.

  “Sometimes the past can be tempting.”

  I swung my head back to Mama and squinted. “Tempting?”

  “You already know each other so you get to skip the uncomfortable ‘who is this person?’ phase. I’m just saying, it can seem easy.”

  “Well, I don’t think Ben will be tempting. He has a girlfriend. And I don’t know him anymore. Not like I did. It’s been too long.”

  She studied me a moment, then smoothed her jacket over the crook of her elbow. “The heart can be a twisty little thing.”

  “Yes, it can.”

  “Good night, sweetheart.” She trotted down the front steps and disappeared in the dark yard, a pocket flashlight her only guide.

  Before shutting the door, I closed my eyes and listened. No sounds of tires on the road, no engine rumble. Ben was probably inside his house by now, chatting with Nick, winding down. I inhaled, expanding my lungs and throat until they protested. The post-rainstorm air was heavy with humidity and the scent of wisteria battered by the rain.

  I knocked softly on Evan’s door, then pushed it open. She sat up in bed, her damp hair piled on top of her head, a paperback balanced on her knees.

  I sat down on the edge of the mattress. “Everything okay?”

  “Just peachy.”

  “How was Nick? He seems nice.”

  “He is. And he was fine. Just brought me home and left like a gentleman.” She straightened her legs out in front of her, dog-eared a page in her book, and closed it. “How was Mr. Bradley?”

  “Fine too. A gentleman.”

  “Like father, like son?”

  “I guess so. This evening has felt a little ‘like mother, like daughter,’ so I guess it fits.”

  “Huh?”

  “Well, we both . . . Never mind.”

  “We both had unexpected dates,” my daughter said. “Is that what you mean?”

  I raised my eyebrows. “I suppose that is what I meant, but I’d hardly call them dates. And anyway, you’re not quite old enough to date anyone.”

  “I’ll be in high school in August. And fifteen soon after that.”

  “Yes, I’m aware of that. But when did I say fifteen and high school was the magic combination? I don’t remember saying that.”

  Evan snorted. “You’ve never said anything about it at all.”

  “You’re right. I’ve never had a reason to. Do I have a reason to now?”

  Evan rolled her eyes but then glanced back at me. “No. I mean, I don’t think so. So, no.”

  “Okay. Good.”

  “Do we have a reason to have this conversation about you?”

  I opened my mouth, then exhaled. “No, we most definitely do not.”

  “Okay, good.”

  “Smart aleck. You must have gotten that from Mama.” I leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Don’t grow up too fast.”

  “Too late, Mom,” she said, but she reached her arms up and hugged me.

  I closed the door behind me and rested my head against the wall. I stayed there a minute, then remembered Mama. I walked the few steps to my bedroom and pulled back the curtain on my window. After a short moment, Mama’s back porch light flicked on and off through the trees that separated our houses. All three of us, safe at home.

  CHAPTER 15

  Even with regular watering habits, your summer fern may lose its bright-green color or stop growing altogether. If this happens, try submerging the pot in water to saturate all the soil. A thorough soaking should perk up your leaves even in midsummer.

  —SARA BETH MCKAY, TIPS AND TRICKS IN THE GARDEN

  JESSIE

  Before I went to bed that night, I filled my bathtub with the hottest water I could stand and eased myself down. Inch by inch, the water covered my body until it stopped just below my chin, submerging everything else. As I soaked, I let my mind drift to those years after Ben told me he loved me. After I let my friends lead me away. When, unsure of what to do with such honest, unashamed love standing right in front of me, I responded with silence.

  I’d often wished I could go back in time, back to that hot night in a dry field on the outskirts of Perry. Back to the boy and girl we were, but with the added benefit of years of wisdom and hindsight.

  Over the next couple of years, we saw each other off and on when we were home on school breaks. We both had jobs while we were in school, so neither of us stayed in Perry long when we visited. When we did see each other, it was awkward, something we’d never experienced before in our friendship. The likely cause was that neither of us mentioned the night of the bonfire.

  I wished he would, if only so we could move past the uncomfortable distance that had sprouted like ravenous weeds between us, but he acted like he’d never said anything. He wasn’t the kind of guy to dwell on feelings or emotions—at least not out loud. And it felt too weighty, too sacred, for me to bring it up on my own.

  In Birmingham I went on dates here and there with guys I’d met in classes or at parties, but Ben remained on the fringes of my mind, reminding me that he still had some kind of hold on me. Something I couldn’t quite shake free.

  Then I met Chris and everything changed.

  During a late-night run to Waffle House one night with some friends at the beginning of my senior year, I took a bite and felt something crack in my tooth. The next day I called up the nearest dentist, a Dr. Chris Ashby, and made an appointment. Expecting someone older—maybe a nice grandfatherly type like my dentist back home—I was wholly unprepared for the young, handsome man who strode into the room. He sat on the swivel stool, his eyes focused on his clipboard.

  As he scanned my chart, I took him in. Sandy hair, blue eyes, tan skin. His forearms were strong, thick with muscle, fuzzed with blond hair. Neat fingernails. No wedding ring.

  Finally he lowered the clipboard. “Miss McBride, what . . . ?” As soon as he raised his eyes to me, he paused. He cleared his throat, then smiled. A wide, J.Crew smile. “What brings you to me today?”

  An hour later I left with a new filling in my tooth and a card with my next appointment written down. On the back of the card, he’d written a note. “It would be my pleasure to take you out to dinner. I’ll call you.”

  To this day I don’t know how he got my phone number. Lord knows I hadn’t given it to him. I didn’t always obey Mama’s teachings back then, but I knew not to offer my phone number to a stranger, even if he was completely charming and gazed at me like I was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. For all I knew, he got it from the paperwork I’d filled out and handed to the receptionist behind the front desk. That, of course, would have been unethical. Then again, Chris wasn’t known for his high standard of ethics. But I didn’t find out about that until later.

  I came home from our first dinner together imagining what a life with him would be like. He was twenty-eight years old and had taken over his dental practice from his uncle, who was retiring early. Business was good. So good, in fact, that Chris only worked
four days a week and owned a house on Lake Martin. I was twenty-two and hungry for life.

  Ben’s words the night of the bonfire came back to me. “Jessie, you’re so much more than all this.” I still had a pit in my stomach about how things were never resolved between the two of us. Unspoken explanations and confessions hung thick across the miles between us. But he’d said I was more than Glory Road. More than Perry. If that was true, Chris represented so much more. A life with him would be so much more.

  That first date turned into a solid week of dinner dates, which morphed into me attending charity dances and fund-raising parties on Chris’s arm during the holiday season. He made a lot of money, but he also gave a lot of it away, which I thought spoke to his kind and generous heart. People were always asking him to chair committees, speak at service-group lunches, and participate in auctions and tournaments. When we were out together, people constantly came up to him and shook his hand, thanked him for this or that contribution. But his attention was always on me. I felt treasured, desired. Like I’d finally become who I’d strived so hard to be.

  When my friends met him, he charmed them just as he’d charmed me. Everyone was so excited for me, I let myself be carried off on the wave of hope and possibility. Deep in the quiet places of my heart though, I knew the me Chris had fallen for was different from the me Ben knew, different from the me I was when I was alone, staring at myself in the mirror.

  One night in the spring of that year, I got all dressed up for a fund-raising gala. Chris picked me up and whisked me to The Club in time for a drink on the patio at sunset. The night felt magical—the air warm and fragrant, the breeze still a touch crisp, my pink dress shimmery, Chris’s smile loose and directed at me. Guests filled the rooms and spilled out onto the patio. At one point in the evening, I left to search for the restroom. When I came back, I couldn’t find him in the sea of people. In the dark, all the men in their dapper suits looked strangely similar. I stood by the glass doors and scanned the patio.

  Finally I saw him speaking with an older gentleman by the bar. When Chris caught my eye, his face brightened and he excused himself. As he made his way toward me, a couple of people tried to pull him into conversation, but his eyes remained firmly locked on mine. When he finally waded through the crowd and reached me, he wrapped his arm around me. “You have no idea how glad I am that you walked into my office that day.” His breath was warm in my ear, his hand a pleasant pressure on my lower back. “You’d make me the happiest man alive if you’d stay with me forever.”

  He kissed me then and led me to the dance floor inside. The band played Marvin Gaye and the lights were low. We danced until my legs felt watery and the band said good night. I waited for him to say something else about that “stay with me forever” bit, but he didn’t. Still, I felt the conversation wasn’t finished. What was to come both elated and terrified me.

  Because even at night after Chris would drop me off at my apartment, my lips tingling from his kisses, my head swirling with his attention, his laugh, the giddy butterflies in my stomach, Ben was still there. In my mind, at the edges, in the silence. I still wondered what might have happened if I’d had the courage to tell him how his quiet acceptance of me and his steady, calming presence had given me sure footing, a solid ground under my feet. How his simple tenderness had made me feel secure and safe in a way that Chris, for all his bold charm and towering self-confidence, didn’t.

  I felt guilty for thinking of Ben when Chris was right there in front of me, beckoning me to a life that promised to be more. Whereas Ben had told his truth then backed away, Chris was only moving forward. Toward me, toward us.

  On a rainy Sunday a couple months before graduation, when Chris was out of town and my apartment was empty, I made a choice. I felt in my bones Chris would be proposing soon—he’d already told me of his grandmother’s engagement ring and his mother’s dream to see her son get married in the Cathedral of Saint Paul downtown. Why would he let me in on these family details if he didn’t plan to propose? I couldn’t believe my luck at being chosen by this man, plucked out of my normal life and plunged into this new life of privilege and pleasure. But another part of me panicked at the thought of accepting his proposal without knowing if even a flicker of life remained in what Ben and I once had.

  I hadn’t called him in over a year, and as I did now, my fingers trembled. Then he answered, his voice low and so familiar. I squeezed my eyes closed, unsure of what I expected from him. How did he feel about me now? A part of me hoped he’d want to fight for me.

  We chatted for a few minutes, catching up on trivial, superficial things—his parents and mine, finals, plans for after school. Finally he exhaled. Though I couldn’t see him, I imagined him raking his hand through his thick hair, his brown eyes liquid and alive. “Jessie . . .”

  “I met someone,” I said.

  “You . . . what?”

  “I met a . . . a guy. A man. He’s a dentist. He’s . . . he’s my dentist, actually.” I was stammering, rambling, but I couldn’t stop it. “We’ve been seeing each other for a while now. Since the fall. Things are . . . I think things are good.” I swallowed and wished I could pull the details back in my mouth, like an avalanche in reverse. I closed my eyes and waited for his attempt. His fight. Waited and hoped.

  Just when I thought he might not say anything at all, he spoke. “That’s great, Jess. I’m happy for you. I want you to be happy.”

  I cried over Ben for the first and last time that night. Anger and embarrassment coursed through me, along with a fair measure of sadness. I told myself he must not have meant his words at the bonfire. That he’d tossed them to me with hardly a care. “I’m in love with you. I’ve loved you for so long. I just needed you to know.” Maybe he’d been drinking. Maybe he didn’t even remember it. I felt ridiculous for giving his words a second thought, much less years of it.

  Chris proposed a few weeks later and I hesitated only a second before saying yes. He slipped his grandmother’s ring on my finger and kissed the back of my hand, then my wrist, then the inside of my elbow. I closed my eyes and breathed it all in.

  The minute we returned from our honeymoon, I threw myself into the life I was supposed to lead. I hosted dinners and parties. I joined the Junior League. I bought golf skirts and strappy yoga tops and expensive wine, though I couldn’t tell it apart from the cheap stuff. And I volunteered everywhere, from Children’s Hospital to the Birmingham Botanical Gardens. This last volunteer post spoke to a deep part of me, tapping into my onetime desire to coax life out of dirt, seeds, water, and sunlight.

  Sometime during my pregnancy with Evan, things changed. The flashy, well-heeled life I’d become used to lost its luster. Hosting dinners felt laborious. I was always nauseated, and my expanding middle didn’t fit into the slim sheaths I generally wore to galas and parties. I had the urge to hole up and nest, to create a warm, soft space for this new little life.

  Then Daddy died, a cruel surprise. He’d always been so capable, so dependable. His foot slipping was such a minor detail, but there at the top of the ladder, it was the one that mattered most.

  I’d always wanted what my parents had—this one great love. They’d made me believe it was possible it would happen to me too, and I thought I’d found it in Chris. But Daddy’s death changed my belief. Sure, a love may be great, but that didn’t mean it would be forever. Where before I’d thought love was what sustained you, what carried you, I now knew it didn’t last. Hurt would still come.

  When Evan was born, I fell deep in love. She was so soft and sweet, her eyes so curious, her fingers tiny vises around mine. I didn’t want to be away from her. She nursed frequently and refused a bottle, so it was nearly a year of sending Chris off to his functions while I stayed behind with Evan.

  Meanwhile I soaked in my new role as a mother. I met moms for playdates, let Evan play in the sprinkler wearing nothing but a diaper, and pulled blankets out into the front yard and lay on the grass with her, pointing out shapes in the c
louds. I was truly comfortable in my skin for the first time, and it completely changed me.

  I loved my new life, but I knew Chris was bewildered by the change in me. Sometimes he’d come in late, the smell of bourbon on his breath, his hands fumbling for the edges of my nightgown. I knew something was off. Had been for a while, actually. It wasn’t anything worth confronting him about, just a gut feeling I didn’t know what to do with. Deep down I knew a woman should always trust her gut, but honestly, I didn’t want to know if he was cheating. It was easier that way. Not to have to figure out what to do. Not to uproot Evan and cause her life to turn inside out.

  Then one day I had a dental appointment. Just a regular cleaning. Evan was tucked away at preschool, and the spring air was fresh and green after an early morning rain shower. It was beautiful, really. The best kind of day.

  I settled down in the chair and a new hygienist came in. My regular hygienist, Tiffani, was out for the day. The new girl began whispering to me the minute I lay back in the chair.

  “I just admire you so much, Mrs. McBride.”

  Surprised, I managed to mumble an awkward “thank you” around the probe in my mouth.

  “Some women would . . .” She pursed her lips together. “Well, I’ll just say I think you’re such a lady for letting everything roll off your back like you have. It shows true class.”

  I let that sit for a moment, then pulled her gloved hands from my mouth. I swallowed hard. “What are you talking about?”

  Her eyes grew big and round. She shook her head. “You don’t know?”

  “Know what?” I sat up, fighting against the steep decline of the chair.

  “He and Tiffani . . .” She took off her guard glasses and sat back in her chair. “I’m so sorry. I just figured you knew and you were . . . okay with it. I’ll . . .” She yanked off her gloves and stood, then darted out of the room.

  Sitting in that chair with the thin paper towel clipped around my neck, I realized with utter clarity that my whole world had crumbled around me. Not only was my dad gone, but my husband—the one who was supposed to love me enough to forsake all others—had instead forsaken me. I searched through memories and events and pulled out snatches of conversation, sideways glances, lingering hugs, sharp words. It all made sense.