Work in Progress

Everything We Used to Have is upmarket book club fiction that follows the journey of Jemma Jordan as she comes of age in the 1980s.

Fighting to keep a promise to her father, Jemma must protect her family’s secret gift from a dangerous grandfather who will stop at nothing to possess it, and restore his evangelical empire.

Chapter 10: I Bid You Farewell (excerpt)

After the service, the way people tried to comfort my family was unbearable. Greeting cards and casseroles. Pity eyes and platitudes. Well intentioned clichés people often share in the space between mourning and comfort. Not to mention the talk about heaven and angels and “a reason for all things.” What did any of them know about dying and what came after? 

“Well, that should about do it for the Hallidays,” I heard one man say.

“How will they know he’s gone?” said another. “They didn’t even know he was here.”

“It will never be over for the Hallidays,” said a third. “Not until they win.”

There was a bunch of talk like that I didn’t understand. Asher was too busy keeping Mama on her feet to hear what I heard. With everyone preoccupied over grief and suppositions, it was easy to escape down the buggin’ trail.

Sun sparkled on the river. Afternoon clouds rolled in overhead. Half the sky was blue, the other half grey. Hope and despair. A fitting division for the state of things. Flashes of bodies and echoes of voices crowded my memory as I stared down across the distance to the river. If I breathed deeply enough, I could smell rain.

I crumpled to the ground, covered my face with my hands, and cried. 

I don’t know how long I stayed like that, sitting on the crest of the little rock slope that led to the river. When Mama approached she sat beside me in the dirt. Gabriel wasn’t with her. I felt Asher’s body hovering behind me. I gazed out over treetops with yellow leaves and let the afternoon breeze dry my tears. 

Mama took my hand, cupped it between both of hers. “We have an important duty now, Honeybee. Promises to keep.” She followed my gaze. It was easier to talk about weighty things if we talked to the trees instead of each other. 

“What are you talking about?” I wiped snot away with the back of my free arm. “Buck’s gift is gone.”

“Jem. You saw what I saw. Our promise to Buck doesn’t die because he did.”

“Because of Gabriel?” I asked. 

She nodded. “It will be hard. Buck kept so many specifics to himself. That was our biggest mistake. Assuming he’d always be here.” 

Asher lowered to a knee on the other side of her. “Are you afraid, Mama?” 

She swallowed hard. For a moment she didn’t answer, struggling with the lump in her throat. She saw something undefined in the distance, something that nearly took shape enough for me and Asher to see it. “We’ve lost the best man in the world,” she said at last. “A man who gave everything.”

“Some guy said the Hallidays won’t quit until they win,” I said. “What does that mean?”

“It means our luck can run out at any minute.” Spell suddenly broken, she looked to Asher, then to me. “I’ve never known a man so simultaneously loathed and admired as Robert Halliday. He will stop at nothing to rebuild what he used to have.”

“What did he used to have?”

“Everything. And he’s been searching for sixteen years just to reclaim it.”

Asher grabbed a rock and stood.“But it doesn’t belong to him.” He chucked the rock but not far enough to hit water. “The gift is Gabriel’s, not theirs.” 

“It’s awfully difficult to change what people believe,” Mama said. “And what people like the Hallidays can get others to believe. Don’t trust any of them. Ever. You hear me? Not one.”

“What about Alma?” I asked.  

Mama looked surprised I knew the name but not angry. I expected her to dodge the question, but lying no longer served her. Asher and I learned more about our family the summer of ’82 than we’d known our entire lives. Even Mama, who liked to ignore trouble and pretend everything was okay, knew it was too late to go back to before. “Even Alma. We cannot let any of them find us. We must conceal the light.”

Conceal the light. Prophetic words. A chill coursed through me. When I spoke, my voice quivered. “They can’t take a baby from his mama. It’s against the law or something.”

“These men don’t follow laws.” 

“What about your family?” Asher asked. “What about them?”

Mama’s lashes fluttered over mermaid eyes. “My mother’s dead.”

“But—”

“My mother. Is dead.”

Her punctuation caused me to tense. I held my breath. Asher looked down at the toe of his shoe, then back up, his hands on his hips the way Buck used to stand.

“Asher, you are strong and capable and you know what you’re doing. You’re going to see us through this. And Jem?” She turned to me. Squeezed my hand hot between hers. “You were Buck’s honeybee. His sweetness. His light. Everything he used to see in his younger self he saw in you. You two are the best of him, you know that? The absolute best of him.”

The best of him? That might be true of Asher but not me. I was selfish. Impulsive. Didn’t she see? Buck was the sun that lit the world.
I was the moon who stole light to be seen.

“Folks are waiting.” Valdez’s voice came from behind me. I turned over my shoulder to see him framed between some cottonwoods. “Will you be much longer?”

Asher reached down to help Mama to her feet. She wiped dirt from her bottom and held out her hand to me.

I looked at her hand. Then up, the sun lighting half her face. “If Buck was once Gideon Halliday, Mama, who were you?” 

“No one, Jemma.” Her voice was small. “I was no one.”