Find Wonder in All Things - By Karen M. Cox Page 0,53

shacking up with him at your grandparents’ cabin for three weeks? I told your father he should intervene, but he just said you had to sow your wild oats like any other young person. Now look where we are.” She rinsed a handful of silverware and dropped it in the dish drainer.

“Mama, I love James, and he loves me. We’ve been planning this for six months now. I finished out my first year, and I can transfer to a school around Nashville. He says — ”

“He says, he says . . . He’ll say a lot of things, Laurel. Young men are just like that.”

“He’s not like that.” Laurel’s voice was quiet but steady. She picked up a dishtowel and began drying the plates in the drainer. “I wish you’d get to know him before you said those kinds of things.”

“I know his type. He came to dinner that night, and I talked to him then.”

“One evening, Mother. You can’t get to know someone in one evening.”

Mrs. Elliot sighed and put down her dishrag. She took the towel from Laurel and dried her hands, then took her daughter’s hands in her own and led her to the kitchen table.

“I know you think you understand everything. You’ve basically raised yourself since you were seven years old. By the time you were twelve, I didn’t think I had anything left to teach you. But I know something about this, so please, please hear me out.”

Laurel said nothing, but she nodded reluctantly.

“I’ve been where you are now, Mountain Laurel. I met someone when I was eighteen years old. It was 1968. They called it the ‘summer of love’ . . . Well, it certainly was for me. I was waiting tables, planning to go to college in the fall. He had just graduated college and was staying here with his uncle and aunt for the summer. He was going to graduate school to be a professor. Almost every morning, he came in to the diner where I worked — got a cup of coffee and a stack of hotcakes and sausage.” Mrs. Elliot’s eyes were far away, remembering. “That man was everything I thought I wanted: handsome and friendly and smart. I was so shy and quiet; he seemed perfect for me. Lord, I was a fool for him. We had this incredible whirlwind romance. When the summer was over, I discovered I was pregnant.”

Laurel sat, shaking her head in disbelief. That smitten, naïve girl her mother described just couldn’t be the tired, haggard-looking woman sitting in front of her now.

“I didn’t know what to do, but he said we should get married. I asked him about his graduate school, and he said he’d go back after a couple of years. I was worried about my college, but he said when the baby got older, I could finish school.

“As you’ve probably already figured out, that man was your father. That baby was Virginia Bluebell. The years went by, and he never went back and neither did I, and it became pretty obvious that neither of us was going anywhere when I got pregnant with you. So I gave up on the idea, but your father was always dreaming about what he was going to do next. He read a hundred books, talked to dozens of people ‘in the know,’ made all sorts of plans and promises, but in the end, it all came to nothing. When his uncle died and left him this broken-down marina, he promised things would get better, but I’ve lived this hand-to-mouth existence ever since. So you see, what they say doesn’t mean anything, Laurel.

“Is this what you want? Look around you. Do you want to end up like me?”

“Is it so awful being you?”

Her mother held her gaze for what seemed like an eternity. “Yes,” she said simply. “Yes, it is.”

Laurel’s eyes filled with tears.

“Finish your education, Laurel. Don’t follow this boy on a crazy path to nowhere. You might think you love him, but you can’t live on love. The only person you can rely on is yourself.”

* * *

The pot toppled over on the wheel. Snorting in frustration, Laurel scooped up the clay and smashed it into a blob before throwing the whole mess away.

If only she had met James when she was a senior in college instead of a freshman. If only his parents hadn’t gotten a divorce and he had stayed in Dayton or kept in touch with Stu. If only she had been