Chapter 27 Decisions Decisions Decisions
Emma had just fallen back to sleep when the nurse came in the room to take her blood pressure and temperature. There was not much else the nurse could do but try and make her comfortable. Missy looked on with sadness in her eyes and she felt so alone.
Emma could not talk much now but she in her own way remembered how she continued to clean houses and raise Missy as best she could. She was determined that she would do a better job with Missy then she had with her daughter. Emma would come home from work tired but never too tired to check to see if Missy had done her homework. Even though she may not have understood the school work, she still checked it as if she did. She made sure that she went to the school at each PTA meeting so that she could see how Missy was doing in school. She remembered sitting across the kitchen table and telling Missy that she would go to college even though\she did not know how she could afford it but somehow she would. Missy would be different.
Her mind then went back to that day in November when she was doing her normal housework, when across the television breaking news that President John F Kenney had been shot and killed in Dallas. While she had spent little time thinking about politics, she like many others had grown to like him and his family who lived in the White House in the same city as she but still so far away. In fact she had never seen him in person. She would see the White House every day as she traveled on the bus to one of the houses that she cleaned but never gave it any more thought as she was just too busy trying to make ends meet for she and Missy.
It was not long after that she received a telegram. Her first thoughts went to the day that she received the telegram on the death of Phillip. She opened the telegram to read the news that her mother had died. Her father had died several years earlier and while she had not forgiven him for sending her away, she had gone home to the funeral. The funeral was over at 2 and she and Missy was back on the bus at 3 telling everyone that she had to hurry back to work. This time it was different.
While Emma had also never forgiven her mother, she wished that she had at least kept in touch with her. She had not spoken to her mother since the funeral of her father. In fact she could not remember even talking with her mother at her father’s funeral. There had been only one person in Riverside who she called anything close to a friend. It was that person who had sent her the telegram. It was with this feeling of regret that Emma watched as the body was lowered into the ground. At that moment Emma realized that in fact she had no other family members other than Missy. Not the same for Missy who did not know the deep secret that Emma held in her heart. There was only one other person that knew the secret. They had thought about revealing the secret but decided that it would not benefit anyone so they agreed to go to their graves with the secret.
Emma did not have many fond memories of Riverside so she had never given thought to ever returning to Riverside however that was to change.
As usual after the funerals, people gathered at the home to share their well wishes and to eat. The Church members had cooked plenty of food and wanted to do their duty as church members. Emma’s mother had been deaconess at the Church for more than 40 years. She was head of the deaconess board as her husband had been head deacon for many of those years. The Church members did not really know Emma but just knew that she had left home at an early age to go to Washington DC and had been home only once since then at her father’s funeral. They knew that she had a granddaughter but nothing more. When asked Emma told them that she had been married but was now a widow. There was limited talk about her daughter but everyone just presumed that Phillip was the father of her daughter and thus the grandfather of Missy.
Tom Jr. asked Emma if he could speak with her for quick minute. Emma did not know Tom and just guessed that he wanted to offer his condolences just like everyone else. Tom Jr. went on to introduce himself to her and to state that he had been the attorney for her mother and that she had left him a Will that was to be opened only if and when Emma returned to Riverside. Tom noted that Emma needed to meet with him in his office the next day so that they could discuss the will. While Emma was in a hurry to get back to DC she also was curious about the Will so she decided to meet with Tom the next day.
On the next day at 9AM Emma was at Tom’s office to discuss the Will. Emma had purchased bus tickets for Missy and her on the 1PM Greyhound and so she thought she had plenty of time to meet with Tom before heading back to Washington DC with thoughts of never returning to Riverside. Tom asked Emma to sit down and he opened the envelope containing the Will and last Testament of Emma’s mother. Tom then proceeded to tell Emma that her mother had left the house to Emma. Emma did not understand as she thought that the house was owned by one of the Whites in the town. She never knew that her father had been given the land several years earlier by Mr. Stevenson who decided to give him the land because his family had worked the land for decades as sharecroppers and had never cheated him. However after Emma’s father died her mother had been unable to pay the taxes on the property and the property had been put up for tax auction. Just before the house was to be put up for auction, an unknown person to Emma’s mother and Tom paid the unpaid taxes and Emma’s mother was able to keep the house. There was an agreement made at that time that Emma’s mother would Will the house to Emma if Emma came back to live in Riverside.
At first Emma did not believe what she was hearing and then her heart fluttered as all of the hurt returned. Her first response was to say absolutely no way would she be willing to move back to Riverside. However, she thought about if for a minute and decided not to make a hasty decision. After asking all of the questions that she needed to ask, she told Tom that she would go back to DC and let him know her decision in about a week. She then took Missy and headed back to DC thinking about the first time that she left Riverside for Washington DC. The first time she left it was not her choice but this time it was her choice and also her choice if she ever wanted to return.