When the Jessamine Grows by Donna Everhart

Author:Donna Everhart [Everhart, Donna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington Books
Published: 2023-11-07T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

For her, the moldering was irrelevant. She wanted to remain with Ennis as long she could, and her wish was to keep him with her. He was her adored husband, therefore the strength of her love overcame the workings of nature. They took him anyway, despite her wails, despite her fighting to hold on to him. They would not, could not allow her what she wanted. What they did was proper, and necessary, and somewhere deep down, she understood this. Her desperate behavior, while it created consternation, was also understood. After he was in the ground, she took to bed. Familiar voices came and went, unheeded by her. Bess, Mary, Mr. McBride, and Robert. There was only one voice she wanted to hear, and it was gone forever. They said she would be all right, and hands patted her. Even in her despairing state, their words signified nothing, and her misery increased because life as she knew it had ended. She turned over on her side so she could better ignore them.

Time passed as it does, whether one wants it or not. She slept mostly, because doing so took her into the oblivion she craved. She often dreamed of sitting by Fishing Creek. Another time she was at the edge of a massive empty field with the moon suspended overhead, the color of buttermilk. An owl in a distant pine asked, Who? And she sobbed the answer, Ennis. She would awaken to find faces looming over her in the bed, concern etched in their eyes. She was given small bites of soft food. Sips of water. She took in the nourishment, but it was with little or no recollection of doing so.

She lost track of Robert. He would sometimes appear briefly in the bedroom doorway, but when her tear-laden eyes went searching, he was no longer there. She could not determine how or if he was managing this dreadful, horrible outcome. She was too distraught to tend to him, too lost to find her way out of her sadness. She had no recollection of what she did, or what she said, or how it came to be that one morning she awoke, more clear-headed than she had been in some time, only to discover the house empty. Those who had been there were gone, and all was quiet except for the songs of a white-throated sparrow singing cheerfully in the magnolia rose bush outside the bedroom window.

She sat up in the bed. Her mourning dress lay over the back of the chair in the corner. Someone had found it in the trunk at the foot of the bed and had taken care to ready it for her. The sight of it sent her back to the last time she had worn it, when their baby girl was taken. She wilted where she sat, overcome by the memories. She did not want to get up, and yet she rose, washed, and dressed herself, aware the dress hung on her as if it was still draped over the chair.

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