Free Club Storyville by Riley Lashea Page B

responded, and when I looked up, her eyes sparkled, like hope and stars, still bright even though they were dying. “I know where I’m going next. Now, you tell me how you feel.”
    “I’m scared,” I admitted.
    “I imagine you are,” Nan returned softly, and I knew she understood.
    Uncle Rodney was gone, Edward was gone, Scott was gone, Nan was going, and Ariel would go. I felt like everyone was leaving, disappearing one by one, and that they would just keep disappearing until I was the only one left. The only way to stop myself from being alone, it felt like, was to grab onto the people who wanted me.
    “Jackson asked me to wait for him,” I uttered.
    “Did he?” Nan returned, and I didn’t know what else I was expecting. For her to be excited, maybe, to smile broadly and proclaim Jackson a good old southern boy with nice, thick hair, perfect teeth, broad shoulders, and the charm to back it all up.
    “Yes,” I whispered, and I could fake no enthusiasm.
    “And how did that make you feel?” Nan deferred her opinion until she could get more from me, but I hadn’t really allowed myself to think about that. I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want to acknowledge that Jackson’s request made me feel uncomfortable and trapped and more out of sorts than I already felt.
    “Surprised,” I gave her the only honest answer I could. “I barely know him.”
    “Well, he obviously feels he knows you well enough to ask you to wait,” Nan reasoned, and I nodded my acknowledgment of the fact.
    With nothing else to say, and no answers of my own, when Nan grew quiet, we were left in silence. Even if she tried, Nan could no longer guess what was wrong with me. She could no longer coax the truth from me with the promise of a day alone with her or homemade chocolates. Because Nan could never bring herself to imagine what I was going through, I knew, and I could never bring myself to tell her the entire truth.
    “Could you love him?” she asked me at last, and that was the essential question.
    Not long before, I would have said ‘yes’ automatically and meant it. I wouldn’t have loved Jackson yet, but I would have believed I could, that, in time, I would feel for him what, if I were honest with myself I would admit, took me only moments to feel for Ariel. Knowing there was no other answer I could safely give, I started to say ‘yes’ anyway, because even saying I wasn’t sure would raise questions I didn’t know how to answer.
    When Nan deemed my prolonged silence a fitting time to have one of her strokes, though, I called out for Ariel, who was there before the brief episode came to its end, and I couldn’t even say it was possible I could love Jackson when my heart tugged so undeniably in Ariel’s direction.
    Worried I had upset Nan, that I had been the cause of her stroke, I thought about leaving, sparing her more of my troubles, but, feeling her time grow shorter each time she went away and came back like that, I forced myself to stay by Nan’s side.
    “It seems Jackson has been captured under the spell of our Elizabeth,” Nan said a few minutes later, her words slurred, but amazingly lucid.
    They came as a terrible surprise for me, though, because Nan never invited anyone into our talks. I always knew whatever I said was safe with her, and she had never once betrayed my trust.
    “He wants her to wait for him,” she went on, “and Elizabeth doesn’t know what to say. What do you think she should say?”
    Ariel’s jaw clenching and unclenching quickly, it could have been frustration at the blood pressure cuff she had just taken from Nan’s arm, which was putting up a fight as she tried to fold it back into its place. “I think she should say whatever she feels,” she answered.
    “She doesn’t know what she feels,” Nan replied, and I realized not saying anything had said everything I hadn’t meant to say.
    Finally tucking the blood pressure cuff into its place on the shelf, Ariel seemed