Page 39 of Snowflakes Over Starr's Fall
“They retired,” Jenna replied. “They’re living in Florida.”
“Hmm.” Henrietta pursed her lips. “I’d thought they’d died.”
Jenna smothered a startled laugh. “No, not yet,” she replied as she rang up the first can of chicken noodle with vegetables.
“Your father was always a bit of a looker, wasn’t he?” Henrietta remarked. “Charming with the ladies, as I recall.”
Jenna’s eyebrows rose. That was the first time she’d heardthat, although admittedly her father had been—and still was—a handsome man, charming to his customers. “I suppose he was,” she told Henrietta. “He and my mother love each other very much.”
“Well, your mother certainly loved him,” Henrietta replied shrewdly, before adding quickly, “I always thought they were a good-looking couple.”
What, Jenna wondered, was the old lady implying? What had she noticed—or maybe evenseen? All Jenna’s childhood, her parents had been wrapped up in each other, often to the exclusion of their two children. At least it had felt that way to Jenna… but ithadbeen that way, hadn’t it? Her memories couldn’t be that messed up.
“In any case,” Henrietta resumed, “I hope they’re enjoying their retirement. Life is short enough.” She paused before continuing in a trembling voice, “In fact… I just learned my daughter died.”
Jenna nearly dropped the soup can she was holding. “Your… your daughter?” she exclaimed, startled, before quickly adding, “I’m so sorry.”
“I never knew her.” Henrietta’s expression turned distant; every wrinkle and line in her face seemed to be etched even more deeply. “I gave her up for adoption when I was just a young woman, barely all of twenty.” The corners of her thin lips turned up in a wry, crooked smile, although her eyes drooped with sorrow. “I met a man in New York and fell in love with him, more fool me. It ended up being rather inconvenient… for him especially, as it turned out.”
“I’m so sorry…” Jenna didn’t know what else she could say. She could hardly believe Henrietta Starr, the matriarch of the town, was sharing such painfully intimate details of her life.
Henrietta shook her head, in both acceptance and dismissal. “It was a long time ago. I let it affect me for far longer than I should have. And it took me nearly seventy years to try to find my daughter… and then it was too late. I just found out she’d died a year ago, of breast cancer. Her son wrote me after he’d checked her—oh, what is it called, Face-something?”
“Facebook,” Jenna filled in quietly.
“That’s right.” She nodded and then straightened. “In any case, life is too short for regrets. You should learn from your mistakes, not let them fester, and worse, affect your future.” She gave Jenna an uncomfortably beady look. “Don’t you agree?”
“Yes,” Jenna said after a moment, swallowing hard. “I do.” Henrietta had sounded like she’d meant the remark personally. Had even she heard the gossip about her and Jack, or was Jenna just projecting? She glanced down at the cans of soup. “That’ll be four-fifty.”
Henrietta reached for her voluminous pocketbook, taking out a little embroidered change purse before counting out the amount in quarters with painstaking precision.
“I could give you a lift back,” Jenna offered once she’d taken the money, “if you’d rather not walk?”
Henrietta gave her an imperious look, her nostrils quivering. “I am perfectly capable of managing the walk back, thank you,” she said, and, throwing back her bony shoulders, she strode out of the store.
Jenna put the money in the register before slowly walking back to the shelves she’d been stacking. Her mind was buzzing with all Henrietta had said—both about her own life and Jenna’s. What had she meant, saying that about her parents? It almost had seemed as if she’d been implying that Jenna’s mother loved her father more than he loved her back, and that thing about her father being a looker and so charming…
Jenna had always assumed her parents’ marriage had been mutually consuming. It had certainly felt that way as a child. But what if she’d been wrong? What if it had been more one-sided than she’d ever seen or felt? And why had Henrietta talked about regrets as if she knew Jenna’s own history? If the gossip had reached Henrietta Starr’s ears… well, it was all part of living in a small town, Jenna supposed. And as far as regrets went, she definitely didn’t want them to affect her future, and certainly not for seventy years…!
Quickly, before she could overthink it or chicken out, she texted Jack.
Hope you’re having a good week.
She hesitated, wanting to say something more, but still instinctively reluctant to put herself out there too much. Then she thought of Henrietta again and decided to be at least a little bit reckless.
I’ve been thinking of you and wishing we could have continued our conversation from the other night. There was more I wanted to say.
She pressed send before she could have second thoughts, and then let out a shaky sigh, tossing her phone aside and then rubbing her face with her hands. She didn’t regret saying what she had—not much, anyway—and really she hadn’t admitted that much, even if it was more than she had before, but she knew she’d be checking her phone compulsively until Jack replied, trying not to obsess and doing it anyway.
* * *
By the next afternoon, as Jenna headed over to Maggie’s for Thanksgiving dinner, she was feeling more than a little anxious about the whole affair—orun-affair, as it so happened. Jack hadn’t replied, although she’d seen, with a plunging sensation in her stomach, that her text had been delivered and read… just three minutes after she’d sent it. And still, twenty-four whole hours later, nothing but silence.
Jenna had given herself several stern talking-tos, insisting it wasn’t a big deal and that he was busy, or maybe thinking about his reply, or maybe he’d let his phone run down and had forgotten to bring a charger.
These were, she told herself, all reasonable scenarios… as was the possibility that he’d blanked her because he didn’t know what to say and being with his city friends had reminded him of everything he’d missed about his former life, and so he was trying to figure out a way to let her down gently.
That, really, seemed like the most probable scenario of all.
