Page 27 of Our Now and Forever

He’d told Snow he’d get a job, and working for a newspaper was better than slinging a hammer, but Caleb didn’t know what Hattie expected him to do. Journalism was not his arena, but the paper could be hiring a delivery boy for all he knew.

“I appreciate your help, but I don’t know what you’re offering. And you don’t even know if I’m qualified.”

She once again waved his words away. “You’ll be fine. Now we have more work to do,” she said, charging out of the small sitting room.

“Excuse me?” Caleb said, following after her.

“It isn’t often I have a little muscle around here,” she said over her shoulder. “Keep up and we’ll earn you the first installment on that ring before the day is out.”

Chapter 9

“Mama, if you’ll just listen—”

“Don’t you Mama me, young lady. Do you know what you put your family through? We were worried sick.” Snow had hoped that after eighteen months Roberta Cameron would be too happy to hear from her to launch into a full-on scolding.

Snow had hoped wrong.

“Running away from a good man like that. Leaving us behind to look like fools, trying to make excuses for our daughter’s rash behavior. I know I taught you better than that. I have never been so humiliated in my life.”

No concern over what had driven Snow to her “rash behavior,” as Mama called it. No sympathy or compassion for the daughter who’d been distraught enough to stay in hiding for more than a year. None of that maternal stuff for Snow’s mother.

“I shouldn’t have taken off like that,” Snow said, “but I had a good reason. Aren’t you at all interested in why I left?”

“Do you know that boy has called me every month like clockwork?” Roberta asked. “I could mark it on my calendar and know exactly when I’d hear from him. But I never knew if or when I’d hear from my daughter.”

Pounding her head on the wall behind her, Snow said, “I sent messages, Mama. I even sent presents on holidays and birthdays. You knew I was okay the whole time.”

“As if a pretty teacup would make up for not having you here.” That teacup was Wedgwood, for Pete’s sake. “If you wanted to leave that boy, though heaven only knows what woman in her right mind would, you could have come here.”

“I needed to go somewhere that Caleb couldn’t find me,” she said. “We aren’t right for each other, Mama. Getting married was a mistake, and I couldn’t spend one more minute in that house.”

Snow had hit her limit of toxic hatred from her in-laws, both back at the time and now.

“Marriage isn’t an easy thing, Snow. You had to know that.”

If anyone knew that, it was Snow. A child didn’t grow up in the Cameron household, with the screaming and fighting, empty cupboards and an emptier house, without learning that lesson. Somewhere around the age of ten, she’d started questioning why her mother stayed.

Her parents may have been in love at some point, but they sure didn’t like each other. Zeke Cameron was a man with too much pride who couldn’t keep a job long enough to fill out his first time card, and he had little patience for a wife who pointed out his faults on a daily basis.

“I don’t have any illusions about marriage,” Snow said. She hadn’t been given enough time to even think about marriage before she and Caleb had tied the knot. “But I refuse to stay in a situation that isn’t right.”

Her mother’s voice sharpened. “How could you know if it was right or not? Did you even give it a chance? Two months? You think two months is time enough to know anything?”

“Fine,” Snow said. “I screwed up. I can’t go back and change it now. I’m sorry that you were worried. I’m sorry that you were left to explain my actions. I never meant for anyone to have to speak for me.”

“That’s why you stick around and speak for yourself.” The voice on the other end finally softened. “Are you really okay, honey?”

This was the mother Snow needed.

“I am. Well, I’m working on it. Caleb found me yesterday.”

“I’m glad,” she said. “Now you kids can straighten this mess out.”

“There’s nothing to straighten out, Mama.” Snow kept her voice low as she smiled at a customer passing the counter. “He’s old Baton Rouge money, and I’m no Birmingham money. He’s upstairs, I’m downstairs.”

“Don’t you ever talk like that. I may have cleaned houses a time or two, but this isn’t the nineteenth century. You’re just as good as those McGraws.” Her mother huffed. “Better if you ask me. I like that husband of yours, but his parents are another story.”

And therein lay Snow’s problem. Caleb and his parents were a package deal. She couldn’t have one without the other two, and she couldn’t bear life with the other two.

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