When I got out of the park, I headed straight for my car: a black, 1970 Ford Mustang Boss 320. A year ago when I turned 18, I came home from school and found it parked outside my house with a note on the front windshield that read:
Happy Birthday, Jessie
Love, Jacob
I didn't recognize the name at first and it wasn't until I got up to my room that I remembered. Jacob was that dead beat dad of mine. I knew nothing about him except his face from a picture my mother kept of the two of them on their wedding day. He left my mother when she was pregnant with me; he didn't give her a reason, he didn't even divorce her, he just went out to work one morning and never came back. She told me he left a message for her on the answering machine at the house a few weeks after he left, saying he couldn't come back. The gift surprised me. He hadn't called for any of my birthday's or to see how I was doing, hadn't sent me any presents before. The only thing he'd ever done was sign my birth certificate after my mom mailed it to his mother's house in Alabama.
When I was 5, I began writing letters to him and mailed them to his mother's address, hoping he'd write back. He never did though and after a while I gave up. As much as I hated the fact that he had the nerve to send me a gift after 18 years of silence, I wasn't about to give the car up; it was beautiful after all. The engine ran smoothly and I had been driving the car ever since.
The sun was setting when I finally arrived home. The house was an old mansion near the bayou that used to be a great house on an old slave plantation. My great great grandfather had originally built the place for his family and it had been passed down for generations. I lived here with my mother when she inherited it.
The house stood in all its two story grandeur, at the end of a long, winding, dirt drive way. It was white with pale blue shutters and a porch that wrapped around the entire house on both floors. A wooden bench swing hung on the porch at the front of the house near the two marble pillars. It was almost completely shrouded from view by the towering willow trees.
I parked the car and checked the mail box before heading into the house with the roses I bought from the florist in town. Setting the mail on the counter and grabbing the book that was lying there, I headed to the screen door at the back of the house. This was a ritual for me: down the back patio steps, across the lawn and under the huge willow tree. I sat down beside the grave underneath the tree and set the roses down under the marble tombstone.
"Tessa gave me these ones for free today ; a customer loyalty reward she called it. She says she's gotten so use to seeing me come in and buy the same flowers each month that she felt like she needed to show a little gratitude."
"It doesn't matter though," I say, running my hands through my hair. Its getting longer now, I'll need to have it cut. "I'll always bring you your flowers; always. No matter how expensive they get."
I was used to this; these one sided conversations that I had with her every month. It didn't matter that she couldn't talk back. For me,this was one of the situations where the principle of a thing overrides the logic. It was a like a form of self medication; my own kind of therapy. Talking to her when she was alive always brought me the most comfort and that didn't change now that she was gone.
I open the book and begin to read.
"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,-"
Darkness is beginning to drape the skies around me and the chattering of the cicadas gradually seems to dissipate. I pause to light the oil lamp beside the tree.
"And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st."
No matter how much of a man I think I am or how strong I want to be, I feel the tears well up. She loved William Shakespeare; Sonnet 18 was her favorite.
"So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."
I closed the book after I read the last few lines and told her about the double shifts I was taking on at the lumber yard.
"Maybe then I can pay off the loan by the end of the month. If I don't, the bank will find something to take away from me as leverage." I'd taken out a loan to do some much needed renovations on the house. I had two more payments remaining.
I told her about Jacques and surprisingly Autumn came up into our conversation. I had no idea that she was still at the back of my mind. "She's the first girl I've met in a long time mama but there's something about her that's different. I don't know a thing about her but... But I think I want to. She seems a lot different from Cathy and I think I want to see her again but she's not from here and I don't know where she's staying." Images of Autumn flick through my mind and I begin to wonder where she is right now. Its pretty dark outside. Maybe she's in a hotel room with her family somewhere.
" I miss you mom," I whisper. There are tears running down my face and I hate how vulnerable it makes me feel. " I miss you so much." Running my hands over the marble, I feel the indentation of the engraving. I bid her a farewell and blow her a kiss.
As I stand with the oil lamp in one hand, the light illuminates the words on the tombstone
Martha Lee- Daniels
Beloved wife, mother and friend.
_____________________________________________________________
This chapter is a bit short but its an important part of the direction of the story. His mother's death has a lot to do with the man that Jessie has become.
Vote, comment.
Thanks for reading. ❤
Chyna
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Autumn
Teen FictionA broken man stumbles upon love for the first time- a love that burns fiercely and he can't bring himself to walk away... "I'm the moth and you're the flame and I've been drawn to you from the very moment I laid eyes on you," I whispered while...
