The Sweet By and By Read Free Page A

know”—June stood just beyond Jade’s peripheral vision— “you need to forgive your mother for whatever it is that she did to you.” She paused. “Believe me, holding a grudge does nothing but deepen and widen your hurt.”
    â€œI appreciate your input, June, but forgiveness has a twin: forgetting.” Jade waved Mama’s invitation in the air. “Which is what I’m trying to do.”
    The only way she figured she’d come close to forgiving was to forget her past, which included her mama.
    â€œI won’t argue with you. You know your own heart better than I do, but I wish you’d reconsider.” June pressed her hand gently on Jade’s shoulder. “See you at seven? Diamond Joe’s, meeting with the wedding planner?” She leaned to peer at Jade’s to-do list. “I declare, I don’t know how you run a business this way.”
    â€œMy system works for me.” Jade rolled her chair away from the desk, giving June a good-bye, have a nice afternoon smile. “See you at seven.”
    â€œWhat’s this?” June invaded “the system” and snatched up a sticky note. “A prescription for Max?”
    Nosy . Jade took the note from her. “You have my wedding invitations; now you want my sticky notes too?”
    â€œWhat’s wrong with Max?”
    â€œHis back is out again, and the doctor called in a prescription to the pharmacy up here. He asked me to pick it up.”
    â€œI didn’t know he hurt his back. What’d he do?” June snatched the sticky note from Jade, her expression drawn, her tone laced with concern. She seemed a bit ruffled.
    â€œSneezed wrong or something. It just happened yesterday.”
    â€œHis back’s been a mess since high school football and track.” June stuffed the sticky into her bag. “I’ve got to run by the pharmacy anyway. I’ll pick this up for him. You’re so swamped here.”
    â€œJune, I’m not that swamped.”
    â€œWell, like I said, I’m on my way to the pharmacy anyway. See you at seven.”
    And June was gone.
    Okay, then. Thanks . Despite June’s overreaching into Jade and Max’s wedding plans, and, well, most everything around Whisper Hollow, the Bensons were good people. Floured with Southern charm and tradition and deep fried, June and Rebel were Whisper Hollow pillars. Both sets of Max’s grandparents were descendants of the town’s founders.
    Her people, on the other hand . . . a dad she hadn’t heard from in years, and a flower-child mother stuck in the dried-up soil of the ’60s.
    Jade knocked off her clogs and dug her toes into Roscoe’s warm, thick fur. He sighed and kissed her ankle with a lick. Her vision of her wedding had been a handful of friends and family gathered around as she and Max pledged themselves to each other in a peaceful, solemn, simple ceremony. Jade had never imagined she’d find true love again. But Max had captured her heart.
    Why should she invite the one woman who could destroy it all?

Two
    Amber hues muted the last of the Iowa blue day as the sun rounded the horizon toward the west, taking with it the last bit of warmth. An icy breeze nipped Beryl’s face as she fumbled for her house keys, her arms loaded with mail and groceries, a pack of hungry dogs swirling around her feet, panting and yipping, splashing drool on her shoes.
    â€œWillow?” That girl, where’d she run off to today? “Willl oooow ?”
    Between the doctor’s appointment, the aggravating man in front of her at Prairie City Foods—who paid his fifty-dollar tab in quarters—and the crowding of her daughter’s mangy mutts, Beryl was fresh out of straws.
    Willow, please suddenly appear. Open the door. Help me inside. Beryl’s arms were starting to tremble from balancing her bags. And she craved a cigarette. Her mind’s eye pictured the pack she had