The sound of water tumbling over the rocks brought back memories of all those times when she and her two cousins had run all the way from the house to the falls and jumped in without even a second thought. The race had decided who was the fastest, and the last one in was the loser. Pretty often Nessa, with her short legs, was the last one to dive into the cool creek water. She had never gotten to swim at home, unless the girls’ prayer group got to go on a retreat where there were only girls involved. Isaac believed that girls and boys swimming together in scanty bathing suits would cause all kinds of impure thoughts. Trouble, in a nutshell.
“Yeah, right,” Nessa muttered. “My one-piece bathing suit couldn’t be called scanty by any stretch of the word.”
Tex came around the curve in the path and shook himself, sending water flying everywhere. Nessa laughed and dropped to her knees to pet the dog. “I wish I could just jump in the water like you can. You don’t have to worry about a bathing suit or a towel.” She blushed at even the thought of skinny-dipping.
“Hey, do I hear voices?” Jackson yelled.
“It’s Nessa,” she called out. “Are you decent?”
“Enough for company.” Jackson’s laughter rang out. “Come on in, the water is great.”
She straightened up and started that way with Tex right beside her. “I didn’t wear my bathing suit, but”—she rounded the bend and caught sight of Jackson out there in the middle of the creek—“I will put my feet in.”
The dog took a running dive right into the water, paddling out to where Jackson was and then swimming in circles around him.
Lord have mercy! she thought as she plopped down on the grass, removed her shoes, and rolled up her jeans. His smile would make ice boil.
Chapter Twelve
Jackson swam over toward the bank, stood up when he could touch the bottom with his toes, and walked the rest of the way out of the water. Tex beat him to the grassy edge and gave Nessa a shower when he shook from head to toe.
“You might as well dive in, even if you do it in your clothes,” Jackson said as he sat down beside her. “Tex is like a kid. He’s in and out, in and out, and every time he comes out of the water, he has to do that shaking business. He’ll drench you if you sit here very long.”
“He’s like one of those mist fans,” Nessa said.
“Never thought of it that way.” Jackson chuckled. “What brings you out tonight if you aren’t going for a nice cool swim?”
“I just needed to get out of the house. We’ve been here a week now, and I’m not any closer to getting things sorted out than I was when we first got here. I quilted all day today, and I enjoyed it, but no revelations fell out of the sky like I thought they would,” she said. “And I don’t know why I’m telling you this. We hardly know each other.”
“That’s why you’re telling me.” Jackson picked up a smooth stone and tossed it out into the water. It made a splash, and ripples started at the site and grew bigger and bigger until the flowing water brushed them away. “Relatives and really close friends want to give you advice. A stranger just listens.”
“Then thank you for just listening,” Nessa said.
“When I was a kid, my folks would come see Uncle D. J. in the fall, usually between Thanksgiving and Christmas.” He picked up a stick and whipped it out into the middle of the creek. Tex dived into the water and swam out to retrieve it. “Mama would bring him a box of expensive candy from one of the stores in Austin and a smoked ham. He told me later that he shared the candy with Miz Lucy and gave her the ham to fix for Christmas dinner. When I was about six, Daddy let me come stay a week with Uncle D. J. Mother told me if I got homesick to just call her and she’d come get me. At the end of the week, I cried because I had to go home.”
“Yep,” Nessa said. “I pouted for a week when I had to go home. I’m surprised we never met when we were kids.”
“I always came the first week after school was out, sometime at the end of May or the first of June,” Jackson said.
“We came for two weeks right before school started in the fall. I couldn’t come before then because that way, Mama and Daddy could use my time here as a threat all summer. If I wasn’t ‘good’”—she put air quotes around the word—“then I couldn’t come to Blossom.”
“Then I take it that you liked to spend time here?” Jackson could listen to her soft Texas drawl all evening.
“It was the highlight of my year. Nanny Lucy made us go to church every time the doors opened. Flynn fussed about it, but I was used to that and more. Other than that, I thought this place was paradise. She pretty much let us run wild over the property while we were here. Until we were teenagers, she sewed shirts for Flynn and cute little dresses for me and April when we visited her. I always loved the dresses and blouses she made for me. And she had her quilting ladies on Wednesday mornings. If I behaved, was quiet, and stayed out of the way, I could watch them quilt and listen to their stories,” Nessa answered.
“Did you like sharing her with the quilting club?” Jackson asked.
“Loved it.” Nessa’s smile lit up her eyes. “I have to admit that I kind of let my mind wander when they talked about the Bible or sang hymns, but when they got all involved with the quilt talk, it was right up my alley. I should have known then that my passion lay in that area, but then I had no idea it could be a lucrative business.”
“So what are you trying to sort out?” Jackson asked. “You don’t have to answer that if it’s too personal.”
Nessa shrugged. “It’s not too personal, I guess, but the truth is I need to know myself. I need to figure out what I really want to do with my life.”
“I understand,” Jackson said. “It took me a while to figure out the same thing.”
“What was holding you back?” Nessa asked.
“My brother and sister were teenagers when I was born. They both went into the law business, and I was expected to do the same, so I did. But I hated the job—it made me miserable. I wondered what made me so different from everyone else in my family, and it took me a while to realize I was more like Uncle D. J. than my father or my siblings.”
“I hope I can figure things out like you did. It seems like whatever happened here has rolled downhill to us three kids and helped to make us who we are. If we can understand why, then maybe we can get a better insight into our own lives,” she told him. “Kind of like those ripples in the water when you tossed in that rock. Nanny Lucy and Grandpa are the rock. The first ripples are their three children. The next ones are April, Flynn, and me. But there’s more that go out from there, so if we ever have kids, we need to know what made us who we are.”
“Why does that matter?” Jackson asked. “That’s in the past.”
“The past defines the present and affects the future,” Nessa said.
Jackson tossed another rock out into the water. This time Tex dove in and interrupted the ripples. “Throw in an external force like the dog, and everything is in an uproar.”
“Or maybe that external force will help break the pattern, so the next generation won’t have to face all these problems that we’re dealing with today,” she suggested.