Leaves Of Hope. Catherine Palmer

fallen in love with Jan. She was still a wreck over Thomas when she agreed to marry.

      But time took care of that. Did it ever! John became everything to Jan. Her lover, her supporter, her encourager, her best friend. Father to her daughter, and then to their sons. Those were happy days, for the most part. Jan could look back on her marriage with satisfaction. She had done the right thing. The smart, sensible, level-headed thing. All except for that tea set.

      She set a mug on the counter and dumped in an envelope of instant cocoa powder and tiny, dried-up marshmallows. Well, she wasn’t about to give in to her daughter’s curiosity. Beth now had all the information she needed about Thomas Wood. He had given her his DNA but nothing more. He had vanished. And he was dead.

      At least, Jan was pretty sure Thomas had died. So that was that. Que sera sera.

      “I thought we might drive to Tyler and visit the rose garden in the morning.” Jan forced a lightness to her voice as she poured steaming water into the mug and began to stir. “It’s a little early in the season for the best display of flowers, of course, but there will still be a lot to see. I’m thinking of putting in a bed of roses here at the new house, and I’d like to get some ideas for which variety would work best. Maybe you could help me choose. I may plant some climbers up the south side, too.”

      Her daughter regarded her coolly. “How did Thomas Wood die?”

      “Stop this, Beth.” Jan slid the mug across the counter, sloshing hot chocolate over the rim and down the side. She stomped to the sink for a rag. “That subject is closed. Now, do you want to go to Tyler tomorrow or not? We could stop at the cemetery and visit your father’s grave.”

      “Do you think I actually want to look at some stone stuck in the ground where my father’s body was buried? Dad isn’t there. He’s in heaven, Mom, and that’s how I want to think of him.”

      “Well, you ought to at least see the marker. It’s very nice. Mine is right beside it.”

      “Oh, Mother!”

      “What?” Jan wiped up the spilled chocolate. “I’m planning ahead. I have a plot right next to your father’s. It’s not far from Nanny’s grave—near an oak tree.”

      “So you and Dad can listen to the acorns fall while you’re lying side by side in your caskets?”

      “That’s it.” Jan flung the rag into the sink. “I’m going to bed. If you want to stand there and say one ugly thing after another, you can just say them to yourself. I have better things to do.”

      “Mom, don’t walk away. You cannot leave in the middle of this discussion.”

      As Jan started toward her room, she could hear Beth following. “We’re not having a discussion,” she informed her daughter. “I was trying to make plans for tomorrow. Trying to say something nice. Hoping you might want to visit your father’s grave and remember what a wonderful, perfect man he was.”

      “Dad was not perfect. He was funny and smart and kind and lots of good things. But he wasn’t perfect.” Two paces behind her mother, Beth stepped back into the bedroom. “I’m not living in some fairy-tale world, Mom. I remember Dad’s flaws, just like I see my own. And I’m not mortified that you’re imperfect, either. So, you got pregnant by your boyfriend before you were married. We’re humans. We do some stupid, wrong things. I forgive you.”

      “I don’t need your forgiveness. I need you to stop making such a big deal out of the whole thing.” Jan pulled off her robe and sat on the bed. “It’s so far in the past. Let it go. Do what your daddy did and move ahead.”

      “It’s in your past, but not in mine. I just found out about it, remember? Thomas Wood is news to me.”

      “He wouldn’t have been if you had kept your nose out of my things. Now go to bed, Beth. I’m exhausted.”

      Her daughter stood near the door, staring at her. Hating her. Reviling her. Jan had always known this was how it would be. If Beth ever found out the truth, she would despise her mother for making the decision to keep Thomas Wood a secret.

      But that had been the best way. The right way. John was able to raise Beth without any interference from a shadowy, mythical father figure his daughter might throw at him in her anger. The family had been able to be normal. To behave as a family ought—no skeletons in the closet stepping out to bother them.

      Of course, there was a skeleton in the closet. John and Jan knew it. But Beth and the boys…they hadn’t needed to be made aware of that potentially harmful information. Jan and John had made a choice, and they never once second-guessed it.

      The only problem had been that tea set. Jan had considered getting rid of it, but the fact was…she couldn’t. Somewhere in her heart, she needed her daughter to know the truth. And she needed to preserve that tiny spark of memory that had been Thomas Wood.

      So she had wrapped the set of china in layers of bubbly plastic and hidden it at the bottom of a box. No one was to open it until after her death. Then, if the box happened to get lost somewhere or was put into the trash or given to charity, fine. Or, if Beth actually opened it, she could deal with the truth then. When she was older. Wiser. Less prone to outbursts.

      Her daughter’s dark brown eyes accused Jan from across the room. “I’m not done with this, Mom,” Beth vowed. Her lips tightening, she turned and left the room, shutting the door a little too hard behind her.

      Jan let out a breath and dropped back onto her pillows. She knew Beth too well to think her daughter would drop the subject now…or ever. Beth would bring it up again and again. She would want to look at it the way she used to examine rocks she dug out of the dirt and washed in the kitchen sink. She would turn it one way, then another, asking questions and making speculations, the way she’d done as an inquisitive child. Do you think there’s a diamond inside this rock? If I cut it in half, would it be the same color inside as it is on the outside? What are rocks made of? Are rocks alive? Why do they keep coming up out of the ground?

      Rolling over, Jan covered her head with the spare pillow. But nothing would block the image of her daughter’s accusing brown eyes, so like the eyes of Thomas Wood. The floodgates of memory burst open, and suddenly Jan was immersed in the past she had thought was buried forever.

      Chapter Three

      His eyes like deep pools of chocolate, Thomas sat on the doorstep at the back of the Calhoun house and gazed at Jan. “Why not?” he asked her. “You could at least come and see it.”

      Why not? Seated beside him, so close their hips touched, Jan hugged her middle. Thomas had graduated from college a week ago, and two days later, she had learned the awful, wonderful truth. Snuggled down inside her, in the soft folds of a perfect nest, their baby was growing.

      So, why didn’t she want to spend next semester’s savings, risk the life of her unborn child, freak out her parents and board an airplane bound for a war-torn island off the coast of India? Why didn’t she want to just go off with Thomas Wood, unmarried and pregnant, like a couple of hippie backpackers with no ties and no morals, living on nothing but love? Who did he think she was, anyway?

      “I can’t go with you, that’s all,” she said. Her hair, a waterfall of thick auburn curls, tumbled over her knees as she crouched barefoot on the step. “I’m only nineteen, and we’re not married and besides…I don’t want to go to India.”

      “It’s not India, Jan. It’s Sri Lanka.” He picked up a strand of her hair and twirled it around his finger. Thomas had wonderful hands—big, brown, manly fingers with thick nails and calluses that proved he knew hard work. Of all the things about him that made her stomach do flip-flops, his hands were the best. She recalled the first time she had met Thomas—he’d been lifting a rosebush from a flower cart into the trunk of her mom’s car at the nursery his parents owned. She had noticed his hands first, loved them instantly, then looked at his face and realized she had seen him in school.

      “Hi,”