Chapter 37: Too Little Too Late
"Why now?" Of all of the times that Jo had imagined coming face to face with her mother, she'd never once thought that it would be the night before her wedding.
"I came for your wedding. Every woman dreams of watching her daughter walk down the aisle. So, here I am."
Jo squinted her eyes at the answer. "After thirty years you just decided to show up now for my wedding." Jo started to subconsciously flexing her fists as she saw her mother give her, what could only be, a false smile. "And you expect me to do what, exactly? Be happy about it?"
"Well, that would be a start. You said yourself that not every mother would ride one of those small commuter planes to see their children."
"Is that what you consider yourself? A mother?" Jo stepped back as she took in the sight of her mother trying to walk toward her.
"Of course. No matter what else has happened, I am still your mother. Why shouldn't I see myself as your mother? I gave birth to you after all. Now I know that you already have the wedding all planned out, so I won't go messing anything up for you. And since I didn't know any of your colors, I wasn't sure what color of a dress to buy to wear as the mother-of-the-bride. So I bought a red dress since it will be Valentine's Day. If-" Tracy was cut off before she could finish the question.
"You plan to show up at my wedding and claim to be the mother-of-the-bride? My mother. Let me ask you something; how old was I when I rode my first two wheeler? Or who was my best friend in high school? Who was my first boyfriend? What was my worst subject in school? How about telling me what my favorite flavor of ice cream is? I tell you what; I'll even give you a simple one. How old was I when I had my appendix removed?"
Tracy's mouth dropped. This is not the reaction that she'd expected when she came to speak with her daughter. "I-"
"If you were a mother, you'd have no trouble answering any of those questions. You can't even answer one, can you?"
"That's not my fault! If your father could have just been reasonable! I tried to get him to leave the Corps. If he'd had done that, I wouldn't have gone anywhere."
"What about me? I wasn't in the Corps. Was I not enough to stick around for?"
"It wasn't that." Tracy stared at her daughter with her mouth in a stubborn set.
"Then what was it? Why didn't you ever come back?" Jo asked the question that she'd asked hundreds of times over the years.
"I'm not the only one who wasn't there during some of those times that you are holding against me, you know. Your father wasn't even in the States when you were born. Or there for your first steps. Are you angry at him for that?"
"That is not the same thing and you know it. He was on tour overseas. He couldn't just stop what he was doing. You walked away!"
"I had to get away!" Tracy shouted back. "I couldn't take that way of life anymore. I couldn't live with having a husband that I was lucky to see a few weeks out of the year while being stuck at home with-" Tracy stopped short realizing what she was saying and in front of who.
"Stuck at home with me, you mean?" Jo said through gritted teeth. "Get out. I don't want to talk to you anymore."
Jo turned and grabbed the door knob and left the office and made her way past all of the women who had gathered in the kitchen.
Daisy saw how upset that Jo looked and moved to follow her but Kira put a hand on her to stop her as she watched Stephanie head up the stairs behind the distraught woman. As much as Daisy wanted to run to Jo's side she was much closer to Stephanie then either of them and, right now, three was a crowd.
"I think you should leave my home now, Miss. It's late," Kira said as she stood up and turned back to the stranger. "I suggest that you give Jo some space. I don't know who you are but this is not the time to be upsettin' her."
"Upsetting her? I'm her mother! How could I upset her?"
"Mother?" Both Pauline and Daisy asked at the same time.
Meanwhile, Kira studied the woman who was making this wild claim carefully. If this was Jo's mother then why didn't Jo say that she was coming to the wedding? Plus, she didn't seem to recognize her when she came to the door earlier.
"Alright. Leave a number where you can be reached and if Jo wants to talk to you, she'll call you. Until then, I'd recommend that you leave her alone," Kira said as she crossed her arms.
"Leave her alone. You sound just like her father. What? Did you two get your Strategy laid out for the off chance that I'd show up here?"
"Comparin' me to the general? High praise indeed, but you still need to leave my home. Now!"
Tracy glanced from woman to woman before walking past them. She'd have to try to talk to Jo again in the morning.
Kira and Daisy left Stephanie to talk to Jo so that meant they would need to find some extra blankets and bed down elsewhere instead of heading up to the room that they were sharing with the other two women. Knowing that after the sudden visit from the woman who had given birth to her after all of this time, Jo would need a few moments without feeling like the whole family was watching her. There would be enough staring tomorrow. She didn't need it tonight, too.
Meanwhile, Pauline called over to the main farm house. Jesse answered the phone and listened as Pauline told him of Jo's late night visitor. After getting off of the phone, Jesse quietly made his way toward Thomas and motioned for him to follow him out to the porch. Both grabbing their coats, they slipped out of the house to speak privately.
"Thomas, that was Pauline over at the other house. She says that they got a late night visitor tonight after we all left."
"Oh no," Thomas groaned. "She didn't!"
"So you knew?"
"I saw that Jo's mother came to town this morning." Thomas nodded. "I told her not to go upsetting Jo right here before the wedding. Obviously she didn't listen. How is she taking it?"
"Well, from what I gather, I think that you should go on over there," Jesse said.
Thomas nodded and headed over to the truck and got in so he could drive over to the other farm house. When Jesse went back inside, he ran into Luke who was heading out to see who was leaving out so late.
"Where's the general goin' off to at this hour?" Luke asked.
"He's goin' back to see Jo. She needs to talk to him for a bit," Jesse replied not wanting to lie to his oldest but also didn't want to worry him so close to his wedding day. "Come on, let's head on to bed. You have a big day tomorrow. And since the weddin' ain't until the evenin', I have a lot of work to keep ya busy in the mornin' so that you and Jo don't go sneakin' off again. If you are late tomorrow evenin' for the ceremony like you were for the rehearsal, I'll tan your hide to the point where you won't get to enjoy your honeymoon."
Luke eyed his uncle but followed him into the house. Surely if there was anything wrong, his Uncle Jesse would tell him about it. He may go on up to bed but Luke wasn't going to get any sleep until he heard the truck pull back up.
~01~
When Thomas got over to the other house, Jo went out and got into the truck and the two headed off away from the farm. Uncertain as to just how Jo felt about her mother's sudden appearance, Thomas was unsure of what to say to his daughter. He thought that it would be best not to head to Hazzard; certain that the bride would sure to be a magnet for well-wishers for the wedding tomorrow. That is if anything in Hazzard was still open at this hour in the first place. Thomas instead headed for a diner that he'd been taken to back at Christmas in Capital City that he recalled was opened twenty-four hours a day.
Glancing over at his daughter, Thomas felt out of his element. He'd never really been good with dealing with emotions. His mother had handled that end of raising Jo for him when she was alive. She'd been really good with Joanna but when she'd died, he just didn't know how to take over that role.
Instead he'd remained in the role that he'd been most comfortable with. When he became a Captain, Major, Lieutenant Colonel, Colonel, Brigadier General, and then a Major General in the Marines, he remained one when he went home as well. He was the Military leader and Jo had been his good little soldier while growing up. He knew that was probably unfair but he didn't really know what else to do.
The day that Jo had decided to join the Marines was the proudest day in his life. Now his second in command was being thrown for a loop and he didn't know what to do to help her. Cautiously, Thomas figured that he might as well as broach the subject that both of them were thinking about.
"Are you alright? With your mother, I mean."
"Not really," Jo muttered. "She went straight into how it wasn't her fault that she'd missed the last thirty years. Wanted to pretend that none of it had really mattered," Jo said as she stared out of the window of the truck.
Thomas gripped the wheel tighter, there were so many things that he'd like to say about Tracy right now. The only thing that stopped him were the words that rang in his head that his mother had told him when she first informed him that Tracy had left Jo on her door step in the middle of the night while he was stationed overseas so long ago.
'Don't ever say anything negative about her mother in front of her. She'll only grow to resent you for it. She'll figure things out for herself as she gets older. Until then, hold your tongue around her where Tracy is concerned.'
"I know that this isn't how you've pictured seeing your mother again after all of this time. I'm sorry."
"Not your fault," Jo mumble. "She just came back to make it look good for her anyway. It didn't take long to realize that I'm probably lucky that she didn't stay around when I was little. She acted like I should have thrown myself at her feet for gracing me with her presence for my wedding."
Thomas nodded, he saw that himself. Like she felt entitled for everyone to drop what they were doing just so that she could feel special. She'd always had been given what she wanted when she grew up, being the only child as well. Thomas hadn't seen just how far that self-entitlement went until he was married to Tracy. Then once he'd thought that she'd accepted the fact that he didn't plan to leave the Marines, she'd decided that she did want a family with him after all. Though that only caused the arguments over his service to reignite
Then she had been mad that he wasn't there to help out with Jo while she was a baby. Angry that while Thomas was off elsewhere in the world, she was trapped and home with a small child. He even remembered Tracy asking for enough money to get a nanny for Jo.
He couldn't afford that. Tracy already didn't work; instead she spent her days dabbling with her paints. Then she didn't even want to take care of their daughter. When he couldn't give her the life that she'd wanted she dropped Jo off at his mother's house one night and had never so much as called or sent a letter to ask about her again.
Not until now at least.
~01~
Luke looked over at the clock and saw that it was after two a.m. and the general still wasn't back from the other farm yet. Which meant that Jo was still awake too for some reason. He'd certainly like to know what was going on but there was just no way that he could sneak past so many family members to get outside to head over to the other farm to find out what was going on. Instead he was stuck lying in bed listening to the snores of his brother and cousins. Luke flipped his pillow over and hit it a few times to fluff it a bit.
"What are you still doin' up, Cuz?" Vance's tired voice came softly from across the room.
"The general went over to talk to Jo right after we got back. He still hasn't come back yet."
"You ain't worried that she's havin' second thoughts are you?"
"Heck, no. But I'd sure like to know what's goin' on. It's already pretty late," Luke whispered annoyed at being left out of the loop.
"You'd better try to get some sleep, Cuz. Won't be long before it'll be time to get up."
"I ain't sleepin' until he gets back," Luke said despite the fact that he was tired and could feel his body crying out for rest.
"Suit yourself," Vance said as he turned back over to go back to sleep.
~01~
Thomas and Jo ended up talking over a cup of coffee at the diner. When he heard Jo tell him of Tracy's comment of all the things in Jo's life that he himself had missed, he was a little worried about whether or not his daughter held those things against him, too.
"I understand that it wasn't the same thing, Dad. I might not have when I was younger but I do now. Mom wanted you to be something that you weren't. When she didn't get her way, she bailed. You didn't." Jo did something that she hadn't done in a long time; she leaned in for a hug from her father. "Things might have been rough, but you did your best. I know that. Not that I liked being moved around a lot while I was growing up, mind you." Jo let out a small laugh as she said that last part then released her father. "But that was the only way that we could be together, so that you could be involved in my life. Although when I brought home my first few boyfriends, I may have wished that you'd had been a little less involved."
"What? What did I do?" Thomas acted as if he didn't know already.
"Well, not every girl has their prom date to go through an interrogation on the night's plans and searched before being allowed to go out for the evening." Both father and daughter laughed at the memory of her senior prom. "I'm surprised that you didn't have us followed by the M.P.'s!"
"You might be surprised at how many fathers have at least thought about doing it though. I wasn't going to let just any boy go out with you."
"You wouldn't have had anything to do with that rumor that went around in high school that any guy that tried anything with me would get drafted, now would you?"
"You know that I couldn't have carried out a threat like that." Thomas feigned innocence.
"Like that would have had anything to do with whether or not the rumor spread." Jo laughed as she reached for her coffee for another sip.
"I assumed that it worked? I had to do something for when I wasn't around, didn't I?"
"Well I am not saying whether or not it worked." Jo grinned knowing that it would cause her father to wonder if it had after all.
"Is that so?" Seeing that Jo was feeling a bit better than when he'd first picked her up, Thomas looked down at his watched and saw what time it was. "We'd better head back. You need your beauty sleep. You are supposed to be getting married today."
"Today?"
"That's right. Look at what time it is. Come on. We'd better go."
"Dad, can I ask you something?"
"Sure you can. What is it?"
"You like Luke, don't you?"
Thomas thought about the question for a second before answering, "He doesn't have to know that. It's good for a man to be a little scared of his father-in-law."
Jo smiled at the response. That really did make her feel a little better about everything. Her father didn't like many people. But the Dukes were now among the few that he did. Knowing that, she figured that the rest didn't really matter for tonight. Or was it this morning?
~01~
Once Luke heard the truck pull back up into the yard, he got up and quietly made his way out of his room and caught the general on his way in through the kitchen door.
"Is something wrong with Jo?" Luke asked quietly surprising the older man as he walked in. Thomas wasn't expecting anyone to be awake yet.
"Yes and no. She just had a late night visitor last night. What are you doing awake?"
"I was waiting up for you to find out what was happening with Jo. What kind of a visitor?"
Thomas had to hide his amusement at the fact that Luke had waited for him to come back in his worry for Jo instead of going on to bed himself. Despite it now being his wedding day and he would want to be well rested for it.
"Her mother showed up out of nowhere. Expected Jo to be happy about it." Thomas heard Luke swear under his breath. "She's fine though. In fact, she's probably already asleep by now. Something that you should be doing yourself." Thomas put an arm across Luke's shoulders and guided him back toward the stairs. "Jo will be calling when she's awake. You can talk to her then and ask her yourself how she's doing. Until then, you both need some sleep."
The way Thomas spoke, he made the suggestion sound much more like an order that Luke would have been given as a recruit. Reluctantly, Luke headed on up. If Jo was asleep, he'd not get to talk to her anytime soon. At least he'll get to speak with her in a few hours. Then see her this evening where she'd become his wife.
From there, he'll be the one that she'll call out to when she needs someone to talk to in the middle of the night. And no one had better do anything to upset her again. He'd dare them to try. Knowing that there was nothing else that he could do right now, Luke headed on up, fully expecting his Uncle Jesse to be true to his word and keep him busy in the morning before allowing him to get ready for the wedding.