'Til I Want No More Read online

  Daddy. Maxine and her stepfather got along like mayonnaise and mustard, but more often than not, Maxine respectfully—and teasingly—called him First John and his namesake, her little brother, Second. Daddy, he wasn’t.

  “I know who you thinkin’ ’bout.” Her grandma’s low, soft voice smelled like Brach’s cinnamon discs. “But if the Lord hadn’t taken Henry in that car accident, he would’ve agreed with Vivienne.”

  Maxine whispered back, “Well, if my real daddy would’ve been here, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. I wouldn’t be in this pickle. You know I love my stepfather, but First John only adopted me to hush Mother’s clamoring, not to fulfill some burning need of his—or mine, for that matter. Having his blessing is all well and good, but I’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

  Mama Ruby held up her hands in the universal sign of silent surrender. She walked to the double wall ovens and fiddled with the dials.

  Mother clip-clopped back from the storage room in her daisy-covered clogs and set her handful on the counter. She peeled off plastic wrap and aluminum foil, revealing a frozen pound cake. She usually baked three or four at a time and pulled them out to order for Manna’s customers. Then she’d add a freshly made glaze.

  Maxine scooped up the discarded plastic and dropped it in the trash. She leaned against the counter, twiddling with her flower trimmings. “Evelyn was always so focused on her work—teaching and writing—not on being a mom.”

  Mother peeked over her half-moon–shaped glasses as she set the cake aside and consulted her iPad. “Having a baby doesn’t end the world. It didn’t end mine.”

  “Well, it almost ended mine.” Maxine held her mother’s eyes. Neither blinked for a moment, but then Maxine looked away. “And you’re not a seventeen-year-old.”

  “You’re not seventeen years old . . . now.” Mother closed her tablet with a decisive click. “Just what are you doin’ with those flowers?”

  “I ordered these so I could try out colors and arrangements for my wedding bouquets.” Maxine repositioned a blossom. “I have a feeling Teddy wouldn’t take the news that he’s a father quite as well as First John did.”

  “Your Theodore isn’t becomin’ a daddy no time soon. So no need to send out birth announcements.” Her grandma opened a bag of dark-brown sugar and spooned some into a small pot bubbling away on the gas cooktop.

  Mother opened the refrigerator and drew out a large, glistening ham covered in pineapple slices. She set it down. “I like the purple and cranberry. Are you sure about the orange?”

  “You know orange is my favorite color, and it’s perfect for my fall wedding.” Maxine shifted a stem. “And as far as birth announcements go, that’s exactly what I’m doing by sharing information the world doesn’t have the right to know. This is mine. I’m not holding on to this solely for my sake. . . . Excuse me, Mother, what are you doing?”

  Her mother plucked two orange mums, leaving only one in the center surrounded by a mixed spray of purple and cranberry, like the setting sun on the horizon. “There. Better. See? Your weddin’ is December 5, which feels more like the Christmas season than the fall. And the fact is, tellin’ Teddy is the right thing to do, something we don’t have to tell you.”

  Mama Ruby’s voice carried from the stove. “You ever heard of gettin’ a little married or bein’ a little bit pregnant? Well, you can’t tell that man a little bit of truth. In my day, we called that a lie. And since I’m standin’ on my own two feet, I’d say it’s still my day.”

  “Mama Ruby—” Maxine began.

  “But there’s a proper time and place for it, Maxine. A lesson I learned as a young girl.” Mama Ruby never looked away from the syrupy mixture she would pour over the ham when it was ready. “You probably heard this story I’m ’bout to tell you, but I’m gon’ say it anyhow. Just like Scripture, the same stories have many applications.

  “I remember when my brother planned to leave with Mr. Baker to sign up for the Army. At first, my mama didn’t say nuthin’, but not too long after he left, she sent me to get him off that bus. She didn’t want him to go because she knew if he ever left Spring Hope, he wasn’t ever comin’ back.

  “As much as I hated to, I did as I was told. I didn’t even ask my daddy what he thought of the matter ’cause nobody got in her way. Billy and I was thick as thieves, and I knew what that trip meant to him. So I took the long way round gettin’ to Mr. Baker’s, hopin’ that bus would be long gone. I even went by Fulton’s and bought myself five cents’ worth of candy. But sure ’nough, that bus was still sittin’ there when I came walkin’ up, lickin’ my peppermint stick.”

  “Couldn’t you have told your mother how you felt?” Maxine couldn’t imagine her grandma ever holding her tongue, even as a child.

  “Child, didn’t nobody care how I felt. It was my job to obey. Young people these days, thinkin’ they got a say in everything . . .” Mama Ruby shook her head.

  “Ain’t that the truth.” Laughing, Vivienne took the spoon from Mama Ruby and stirred the glaze.

  “Besides, that’s not the point. Follow where I’m leadin’, girl. Now, when I got there, Billy was already on the bus. You should’ve seen his face when he saw me walk up. His eyes just got bigger and bigger, wellin’ up. Mr. Baker must have suspected I’d be comin’ ’cause he opened up those doors straightaway and asked me, ‘You come for Billy?’ Well, I looked from him to my brother, sittin’ in that window, and I couldn’t do it. I just could not break his heart and pull him off that bus in front of all those other boys.”

  Maxine stopped spinning the vase. “So what did you do?”

  “I put a hand on my hip and said, ‘Mr. Baker, Mama will have your head if somethin’ happens to Billy, so you’d best take care of him.’ He looked like he knew I was up to no good, but he closed them doors and drove away. Billy was still wipin’ his face when he stuck out his hand through the window and waved good-bye. I can still see him grinnin’ as I handed him one of my peppermint sticks.”

  “What did you say when you got home, Mama Ruby?”

  “At first, I reported I was too late to stop Billy from leavin’. Which was mostly true, if you want to pick through the meat to get to the bone—at least accordin’ to your way of thinkin’. It was too late. His heart was long gone, and he needed to follow it. But that wasn’t the whole tale. It wasn’t the truth, and my spirit knew it. Tellin’ that lie ate me up until I confessed it to my daddy. He made me tell the whole story, and then I got the whuppin’ of my life. That was okay though. Forgiveness don’t always soften the consequences.”

  “I don’t mean any harm, but what does all that have to do with Maxine?” Mother set the spoon in a dish on the counter and lowered the flame.

  “Everythang. I could’ve told Mr. Baker that I was sent there to get my brother, but that wouldn’t have been right. It wouldn’t have helped nobody to make him get off that bus. My mama had to let go sometime, and Billy did, too.” Mama Ruby readjusted the dial on the stove when Mother turned her back and walked back to the island. Her grandma lifted a finger to her lips and shook her head at Maxine.

  Maxine waggled her eyebrows and nodded in response as Mama Ruby, the secret sous-chef, continued.

  “That truth you’ve been carryin’ around all these years? Of course you’re goin’ to come clean, just like I did. The same Book that raised me raised you. But when to tell it is just as important as what to tell and who to tell. That decision will affect a lot of lives, like the one I had to make. Only God knows the what, when, who, and how, Maxine. Not me. Not your mama. We’ll help you deal with the consequences, painful as they may be.” Mama Ruby reached into her apron pocket and withdrew a pad of paper and a Sharpie. She marked off an item on her list.

  “I just don’t know what the right decision is! If I tell Theodore, I have to tell Ce—”

  “Hey, y’all! Ooh, pretty . . .”

  Mama Ruby’s green marker clattered to the floor.

  Maxine’s whole body froze. She turned i
ncrementally, like the second hand on a clock. It seemed like a full minute passed before she faced the high-pitched voice coming from the mudroom that connected the kitchen to the storeroom. “Celeste . . . ?”

  Uncle Roy grinned over the head of the thirteen-year-old girl clad in a denim miniskirt, pink-and-orange long-sleeved tee, and pink leggings. He pushed the glass-paned wooden door closed as she bounded into the kitchen.

  “Oh, Maxine, your flowers came!” Celeste’s low-topped blue Chuck Taylors squeaked happily on the hardwood floor. She leaned over and kissed Mother on the cheek. “Mmm-mwah. It smells good in here, Mama. What’s going on?”

  Chapter Two

  MOTHER AND FIRST JOHN had tearfully whispered, “I do” in a church in Spring Hope where Reverend Farrow had eulogized Maxine’s daddy and Vivienne had collapsed at the end of the two-hour funeral service. The pastor had jumped down from the pulpit to help two pallbearers carry her out. Right past the open casket bidding a grim farewell at the front doors. Years later, Reverend Farrow baptized Maxine’s brothers in that redbrick church, dunking Zander and the twins—Robert and Second John—in the pool covered by the floorboards behind the altar.

  Reverend Farrow didn’t get to baptize, dunk, or even sprinkle Celeste. Maxine took care of that before she returned home the winter after she turned eighteen, swaddling her baby girl in a green- and yellow-flowered blanket, a gift from a benevolence ministry. Maxine had found Jesus while standing in front of a singing Christmas tree in the mall in Valdosta, Georgia. Determined to make sure she and her daughter were washed as white as a rare, Southern snowfall, she pressed a local preacher to baptize them both three days later. It took another sixty days to work up the gumption to pack her few belongings and return to her mother.

  When her mother and stepfather opened the door to Maxine that night, they only had eyes for their prodigal daughter on their back stoop holding her torn army-green duffel bag. At first. Then they spied the tiny hand curled around Maxine’s finger and the striped baby bag on her left shoulder. At that moment, both the teen and the infant became their babies. They made quick work of severing Celeste’s parental ties to “that boy.” Every morning, noon, and night following, the couple thanked God for the blessings of forgiveness and second chances.

  Adopting their grandbaby seemed natural. And doing it right away before they moved back to North Carolina from Alabama made the most sense for all concerned. Maxine could pick up her teenage life she’d dropped by the wayside and go on to college. Their toddler son, Zander, would get a baby sister to tease. Celeste would be raised in a home with a father and a mother. First John and Vivienne felt they’d done right by everybody. Not right as the rain that fell once the summer clouds burst at the seams, but as right as the crooked path that wound through the woods back to their wrought iron gate. It always led their family back home. No more loss, no more brokenness . . . until Maxine started falling to pieces years later, awake and asleep.

  ________

  “Da—?” Maxine’s eyelashes fluttered against her cheeks before she sat up, wrestled with the light cover, and untangling it, threw it aside. Another . . . vision. Not quite a nightmare but too unsettling for such an innocuous word as dream. Her eyes searched her bedroom. She found only splashes of hazy yellow and green, filtered through the half-closed shutters, dotting the creamy walls of the garage apartment she rented from her parents.

  Maxine had hoped to recover that week’s lost sleep with a power nap, but the afternoon light skittering around the edges of the room chased away her drowsiness. She relaxed bit by bit into her pillows as the prickly memories of those moments before she fully awoke evaporated with the warmth of the afternoon sun. She picked up her phone and noted the time: 1:47. Her pillows muffled her groan. If she didn’t hurry, she’d miss her date with Teddy.

  ________

  “Do you have anything you’re keeping from me? Tell me now, or forever hold your peace.”

  “Theodore Franklin Charles, didn’t your mama teach you not to talk in church?” Maxine’s questionnaire skittered under the pew and landed in the row behind them. She spun and looked over her shoulder. Thankfully it was midafternoon on a Thursday. The only other people in Grace Chapel were the twelve disciples having supper with Jesus on the wall over the altar. Still, she lowered her voice a notch and leaned close enough to her fiancé that her breath made the sandy curls above his left ear dance. “What are you talking about?”

  Using his trusty Paper Mate pen, he tapped the sheet of paper on his clipboard as he drawled, “They’ve been asking the same questions for the past fifty years.”

  At her look, he shrugged and conceded, “Okay, maybe twenty-five. But these days, we need to dig deeper than ‘Do you go to church regularly?’ to stop the real epidemic killing Christian marriages. So you’re a church member. The devil goes to church, Maxine.”

  “Teddy, this is just a form about premarital counseling.” Maxine glanced around the sanctuary, her heart a heavy, slow-moving stone thumping painfully against her rib cage. She tried to keep her fingers from trembling as she set down her empty clipboard and dropped to her knees as if to pray for Theodore’s soul or perhaps her own fearful one. Instead, she stretched, her right arm brushing the smooth mahogany beneath the seat. When she still couldn’t reach her questionnaire, she mumbled, “Excuse me” and edged past him, tugging down her pale-pink-and-white tweed skirt so it didn’t catch on his brown leather Chelsea boots.

  Maxine scooted back to her spot on the plush, bloodred pew. “So tell me about this Reverend Atwater. What do I need to say to convince him to like me?” Maxine winked at her fiancé.

  Theodore squeezed together the fingers on her right hand and studied her. “You’ve convinced me. That’s all that matters.”

  “We didn’t talk about what happens if we miss a class or, heaven forbid, fail a lesson.” She nodded toward his questionnaire. “I mean, it’s obvious you’re going to be that kind of student who tests the teacher.”

  “Who fails premarital counseling?” He released her hand. With a flourish, he signed his given name on the last page and leaned his clipboard against his chest.

  Who indeed? Maxine’s heart stopped hurling itself against her ribs and resumed its normal, less painful rhythm as she admired his dancing brown eyes and crooked grin.

  “I’m an award-winning educator, the headmaster of a private school.” Teddy inched closer to Maxine and kissed her cheek gently. “I don’t fail anything, especially anything related to you, my love.”

  Maxine leaned into him, turning her face to brush his cheek with a kiss of her own. She wrinkled her nose. Scratchy. “Well, this award-winning headmaster needs a shave. Your five-o’clock shadow feels more like seven.”

  “I didn’t have time this morning. My fiancée made me meet her at sunrise to eat quiche.”

  Her laugh echoed through the empty church as she swatted him with her clipboard. “It was not sunrise! We need to think about our menu, Teddy, and that was the only time Mother could bake a sample. It tastes better straight from the oven.”

  “Well—”

  “Theodore. Maxine. Did you two get a chance to complete the forms?”

  For a second, Maxine’s eyes flew toward Jesus and His disciples before she ascertained the softly accented baritone wasn’t of heavenly origin. She and Theodore turned to their right toward the well-dressed man standing there with his left hand gripping the pew and his right extended in greeting. Fumbling with their clipboards, like guilty kids caught cutting up in school, they stood.

  “Pastor Atwater, hello. This is . . . my . . .”

  “His fiancée, Maxine Owens. It’s good to see you again, Pastor.” Maxine tucked her papers under her arm and reached out to shake hands as she considered her flustered fiancé.

  Reverend William Atwater smiled. “And you.” His long fingers released hers and clapped Theodore once on the back. “Son, you seem a little out of sorts. You all right?”

  Theodore cleared his throat. “No,
sir. I mean, yes . . . I . . . we were just talking, and I didn’t hear you come up. You surprised me.”

  “Like a thief in the night?” Reverend Atwater’s mustache twitched as he chuckled. “Why don’t we come to my office—and I’ll take those forms, even though they’re about as good as unsweetened iced tea. Oh, and you have lipstick on your cheek.” Smiling, he turned and led the way from the sanctuary.

  Maxine swiped at Theodore’s chin line, snickering, “He heard us!”

  The wide-eyed, formerly confident headmaster looked more like one of his six hundred students than their fearless leader. “You mean he heard me. Looks like you’ll be teacher’s pet.” He intertwined his fingers with hers. “It’s time to pay the piper, see what the boss has to say.”

  Maxine picked up her coat and risked one more look at the painting above the altar before she and Teddy fell into step with the lanky, silver-haired minister.

  “So, Maxine, tell me about yourself.” Reverend Atwater ushered them into his office and motioned them toward matching green damask-covered chairs positioned in front of his desk.

  Maxine crossed her legs and fiddled with the fringed hem of her skirt. “Well . . .”

  Theodore reached over the mahogany arms of their chairs and covered her cold hands with both of his. “Well, Pastor, my fiancée is the oldest of four—”

  “Five. I’m the oldest of five. Zan is sixteen, Celeste is thirteen, and Robert and Second John just turned ten.” Maxine returned one hand to her lap and left the other clasped in his.

  Reverend Atwater looked up from the forms on his desk. “That’s quite a gap between you and . . .” His eyes followed his finger as it searched the paper.

  “Zan—Zander. My biological father, Henry Clark, died in a car accident when I was eight, and my mother married my stepfather when I was eleven. After he adopted me, they went on to raise four more children together.”

  “Raise? Your brothers and sister are adopted?”