Matt held her close a few more moments, then stepped back. He nodded toward the corner where Linda and her mother sat.
“You better say something to your momma and Linda,” he said and released her arms. Jamie let go too. It was only then that she realized the key was still in her closed right hand. She slipped it into her uniform pocket.
Her mother stood when Jamie approached, but Linda stayed on the couch, her head bowed.
“Pray hard, girl,” her mother said as she embraced Jamie. “Your brother is going to need every prayer he can get.”
“You seen him yet, Momma?” she asked. Jamie smelled the Camay soap her mother used every night. She breathed deep, let the smell of the soap replace the smell of blood.
“No, he’s still in surgery, will be for at least another hour.”
Her mother released her and stepped back.
“I can’t stand myself just sitting here,” she said and nodded at Jamie’s father standing beside the door marked SURGERY. “Come on, Luther. I’m going to get us all some doughnuts and coffee and I need you to help carry it.” She turned to Jamie. “You stay here and look after Linda.”
Jamie sat in the place her mother had left. Linda’s head remained bowed, but her eyes were open. Jamie looked up at the wall clock. Two-twenty-three. The red minute hand went around seven more times before Jamie spoke.
“It’s going to be all right, Linda,” she said. It was the only thing she could think to say.
Linda lifted her head, looked right at Jamie. “You sound pretty sure of that. Maybe if it was your husband getting his leg took off you’d think different.”
Linda wasn’t thirty yet, but Jamie saw something she recognized in every older woman in her family. It was how they looked out at the world, their eyes resigned to bad times and trouble. I don’t ever remember being young, Grandma Alexander had once told her. All I remember is something always needing to be done, whether it was hoeing a field or the washing or feeding hungry children or cows or chickens.
The elevator door opened and Jamie’s parents stepped out, their hands filled with paper bags.
“You think this couldn’t have happened to Matt,” Linda said, raising her voice enough that Jamie’s parents came no closer. “You think it happened because Charlton had been drinking.”
“I don’t think any such thing,” Jamie said.
Linda looked at her in-laws.
“I got three young ones to feed and buy school clothes for, and a disability check ain’t going to be enough to do that.”
“We’ll do everything we can to help you,” Jamie’s father said and offered Linda a cup of coffee. “Here. This will give you some strength.”
“I don’t need strength,” Linda said, her voice wild and angry. “I need the money Charlton overpaid Matt. Money that should be ours. Money we need worse than they do.”
Linda looked at her father-in-law.
“You know Charlton paid hourly wages to everybody else who worked for him.”
“I earned every cent he paid me,” Matt said. He had left his seat and stepped closer, standing next to Jamie now. “I been there every day and I’ve cut plenty of days dawn to dark. It’s bad what’s happened to Charlton, and I’m sorry it happened. But me and Jamie don’t owe you anything.” Jamie placed her hand on Matt’s arm, but he jerked it away. “I ain’t listening to this anymore.”
“You owe us everything,” Linda shouted as Matt walked toward the elevator. “If Charlton hadn’t taken you on you’d never have been able to make a down payment on that lake house.” Linda looked at Jamie’s parents now, tears streaming down her face. “A lake house, and the five of us in a beat-up double-wide.”
The surgery room door opened, and a nurse glared at them all briefly before the door closed again.
Jamie’s mother sat down on the couch and pressed Linda’s head to her bosom. “We’re all going to do everything possible to get you all through this, and that includes Matt and Jamie,” she said.
Linda sobbed now, her face smeared with mascara. Minutes passed before she raised her head. She tried to smile as she brushed tears from her cheeks and slowly lifted herself from the couch. Jamie’s father gripped Linda’s upper arm when her knees buckled.
“I know I look a sight,” Linda said. “I best go to the bathroom and tidy up so Charlton won’t see me like this.” She looked at Jamie. “I’m sorry,” she said.
Jamie’s father walked Linda to the restroom and waited by the door.
“Come here, girl,” her mother said to Jamie.
Jamie didn’t move. She was afraid, almost as afraid as when she’d seen her father’s face through the windshield.
“I need to call the restaurant, let them know what’s going on.”
“That can wait a few minutes,” her mother said. “We need to talk, and right now.”
Jamie remained where she was.
“I know you’re put out with Linda,” her mother said, “and I don’t blame you. Grieving don’t give her no excuse to talk that way to you and Matt.” She paused, waited for Jamie to meet her eyes. “But you know you got to help them.”
Jamie turned and stared at the wall clock. She thought how only two hours earlier she had been caulking the back room of the lake house.
“Me and your daddy will do what we can, but that won’t be near enough. Your daddy says even if the skidder’s sold, it’ll bring no more than two thousand dollars. We’re not talking about just Linda here. We’re talking about your niece and nephews.”
“Why are you saying this to me, Momma?” Jamie asked. “Matt’s going to have to find another job now, and there’s no way he’ll make the kind of money Charlton paid him. We need all the money we got just to make the payments on the lake house, much less fix it up. We’ll have tuition to pay as well come spring.”
The elevator door opened. Jamie hoped it was Matt, but a chaplain got off and walked past them toward the intensive care unit.
“You’ve been blessed, Jamie,” her mother said. “Linda’s right. Charlton never let anyone but Matt work percentage. You could give Charlton the difference between what Matt got paid and the six dollars an hour anybody else would have got.”
“But we’d have to sell the lake house,” Jamie said. “How can you ask me and Matt to do that?”
“The same way I’d have asked your brother to quit high school. Only I never had to ask. He knew what had to be done and did it without me saying a word to him. Seventeen years old and he knew what had to be done.” Her mother laid her hand on Jamie’s. “That lake house, you had no right to expect such a place so young. You know it was a miracle you got it in the first place. You can’t expect miracles in this life, girl.”
The bathroom door opened and Linda came out. She and Jamie’s father walked toward them.
“Maybe not, Momma,” Jamie said, her voice low but sharp, “but when they come a person’s got a right to take them.”
“You got to do what’s best for the whole family,” her mother said, speaking quietly as well. “You got to accept that life is full of disappointments. That’s something you learn as you grow older.”
THERE HAD BEEN complications during the surgery, and Jamie was unable to see Charlton until after seven-thirty. His eyes opened when she placed her hand on his, but he was too drugged to say anything coherent. Jamie wondered if he even understood what had happened to him. She hoped that for a little while longer he didn’t.
When Jamie and Matt got back to the lake house it was dark, and by then things had been decided, but not before harsh words had been exchanged.
“Come on,” Matt said, reaching for her hand after they got out of the Escort. “Let’s go down to the lake, baby. I need one good thing to happen in my life today.”