The Passenger by Jacqueline Druga (the giving tree read aloud TXT) 📗

“Why don’t you join us?”

“Oh, no, I can’t. Me showing up would just be awkward.”

Haley laughed and smiled brightly. “Mr. Truett, welcome to Williams Peak. You’re a newcomer in town. I would have sought you out today anyhow.”

“Really? Can you find me a glove?”

“We can do that. Let’s go.” She started walking backwards.

“Haley, can you do me a favor?”

“Sure.”

“Can you take some pictures?”

“For your wife?”

Grant nodded. “I want her to see.”

“Then absolutely, I will.”

Grant thanked her. He’d follow her in his truck to the field, wherever that happened to be. He was happy and excited to be there. He wouldn’t be able to take the photos and was glad Haley agreed to it. If anything was going to convince Cate Jonas had amnesia, watching him play sports would be the thing.

◆◆◆

“It’s not a figure eight,” Cate spoke softly to herself looking at the pictures Grant had sent. He asked in a text about the figure eight garden and where he had seen it.

Cate just shook her head. How did he not remember?

She wanted to reply, but it was late. Grant was probably in bed, she had already ignored replying for hours, it was pointless now.

It frustrated her Grant didn’t know, didn’t recall it.

It wasn’t a figure eight, it was an infinity symbol.

When she saw the picture, she was even more convinced Jonas didn’t have amnesia. The colors, the shape, it was all an exact replica of a garden her and Jonas had planted years before.

Many years.

He was fourteen.

Why that garden? Why redo it?

The day she showed him the design, he thought it was cool. It was going to be difficult, but Cate explained to Jonas it was a symbol of never ending. Like the loop kept going, so would the beauty of the garden.

It was a huge project she and Jonas took on that summer.

He had such a gift with gardening, she had savored every moment they did something together.

There she was, seventeen years later looking at a picture taken hours earlier that could have been taken over a decade before.

And yet, there she was on a Saturday night, staring at the beauty of it, seeing the garden and again, like every weekend night, her mind became occupied with thoughts of Jonas.

Only this night it wasn’t worry or concern, it was confusion.

Even more so was the confusion while Cate was having her dinner, a number she didn’t know, started sending her images and videos.

Hi, your husband asked me to send these to you.

At first, she wondered who was this poor person Grant had pulled into Jonas’ web with him?

Then she watched.

Cate watched the video over and over.

It spoke volumes in more ways than one.

The ‘clunk’ sound as the ball hit the bat, followed by a cheer of a crowd. The person recording was a female, young, guessing by the voice when she first heard it.

“Woo. Go Mr. Truett.”

The video badly zoomed in and out as Grant ran the bases for a double.

Cate smiled, he looked so happy and even looked young. A part of her envied Grant for just going with it. For embracing some sort of chance he thought was long gone or he’d never see again.

A closeness with Jonas he had avoided for many years.

It was undeniable, even by Grant, that his choice of ‘Tough love’ with Jonas was what had driven him to look for him until he found him

The camera turned showing a beautiful young woman doing a selfie recording. Her brown hair in a sloppy ponytail. “We’re playing Crossroads Church today. Mr. Truett just drove in what could be the winning run. Oh, wait. Chip is up.”

Chip?

Then Cate saw Jonas at bat. The first time she watched the video, her heart literally skipped a beat. He was wearing shorts, longer ones, but his calves didn’t look like matchsticks and if she wasn’t mistaken, he had a little bit of a belly. It had to be the shirt.

Jonas hit the ball and carried that bat halfway to first base. The girl cheered and Jonas kept running, trying to get a double like his father, but he was thrown out at second base after doing what Cate believed was the worst slide she had ever seen.

“It’s Okay Chip! You tried.”

She laid on the top of her bed, the phone in her hand, looking at the pictures over and over. Cate truly tried to justify why she was still at home. Why she wasn’t there cheering in the bleachers?

Cate didn’t have it in her to be broken again.

How many times had she been pulled into that scheme? The ‘I’m better and stronger’ act that turned on a dime more times than she could count.

She wasn’t angry at Grant; in fact, she was happy he was having fun.

Oddly, Cate carried a sense of peace at that moment, an ability to relax without needing Sleepy Time tea. Much like the nights Jonas was arrested. Instantly she didn’t worry about that middle of the night phone call saying he was dead. She knew he was safe, albeit in jail.

Now he was safe again, his father nearby. Deep in some Nebraska small town, baking cookies, creating gardens, playing music and playing on a church softball team.

A part of Cate knew it from the moment he vanished he was okay. She had that connection to him, and it was that connection that convinced her, Jonas was only one step away from doing it again.

Throwing all caution, and his life, to the wind to live on the edge.

Even with Jessie telling her the amnesia was real, Cate just didn’t buy it. She knew her son too well.

Or she just didn’t want to believe it.

Perhaps it was the fact of what she witnessed in the pictures, videos and texts was the wish of every mother of a wayward child. To see that child grow, change, find peace and be happy.

It was all a fairytale Grant was being pulled into and Cate had to resist, because like all fairytales, eventually they all would come