Part Two
“JJ…” Ellie pauses. “Do you know who I am?” She already knows the answer, but figures that it is easier to let him explain how he knows who she is. She doesn’t want to push him, he’s still just a baby to her.
He nods his head softly as she places the plate in front of him, he sees strawberries, grapes and a cut up apple. The smile stretches from ear to ear as he digs in. “I didn’t at first, I couldn’t see your face.”
She smiles at him, hesitantly, as he begins to try some of the strawberries she’s spent the past two summers trying to perfect. He looks so much like Dina that it shakes Ellie to her core. When he was born, she was sure he was going to look like Jesse, but it’s his eyes and his smile. He is all Dina.
“When you started crying, I saw you.” He explains, his mouth full of grapes moments later. He chews for a minute, seemingly remembering his manners, and then swallows. “I have a picture of you in my room.”
And then he freezes her blood cold with his next words. “You’re Ellie Williams. You’re my Mommy.”
Her mouth goes dry and she has to fight back a sob. She wants to question being his Mommy, but the only thing that dares to escape her lips is a broken whisper of. “You have a picture of me in your room?”
Jesse Joel nods, taking a piece of apple and offering it over to her. She takes it silently, watching him. “It’s a picture of you and Mama. She’s pregnant with me. You have your hands on her belly and you’re smiling.”
She can almost remember that day. They had found a baby boutique in Dina’s last trimester. Ellie had filled her backpack up probably a dozen times, trying to grab all the diapers, clothes and toys they would need. Her last trip back for the pieces to a crib, she had found a photography set-up for the babies.
There had been cameras, and so with a small amount of room left, she had grabbed an old Polaroid camera and some film. That had been their way to document the last month of Dina’s pregnancy, and then JJ first few months before Ellie had gotten art supplies.
They still kept every picture.
“Every night when I say my prayers, Mama makes me hold the picture to my heart and pray for you too.”
Ellie can’t speak, the thought of Dina, even in her justified anger, not erasing her identity to the little boy but encouraging him to think of her like that? Her heart aches like someone has stabbed it repeatedly.
Jesse Joel reaches out for her hand, the softest reassurances in his voice and Ellie is surprised that a seven year old has that amount of emotional understanding. She sure didn’t at his age.
The little boy sees right through her tough facade and continues, “Mama prays for you too,” he admits to Ellie. “Sometimes when I haven’t fallen asleep yet, I listen to her in her room, she prays for you to come home safe.” He pauses again, unsure if he’s supposed to say the last part or if it’ll make Ellie sad again. “She cries too, and curses you out. She always says she wasn’t supposed to be doing this alone, without you.”
At this Ellie hangs her head in shame, a sad look coming over her face so quickly that Jesse Joel reaches across the table once more for her. This time she lets him take it, hearing the little gasp as he notices her missing fingers. A physical reminder of what sacrifice revenge took from her.
Jesse Joel is the biggest reminder though, revenge cost her what she loved most in the world, her family.
“It’s okay.” She reassures him as he splays her hand out, his fingers gently examining the bumps where hers used to be. “I’ve made my mistakes, Potato.”
He doesn’t flinch at the nickname, his voice is soft and determined instead. “I can help you with stuff, when your hand hurts. I know how to pick fruits and vegetables, Mama has tomatoes in our backyard.”
She’s warmed by the idea of him coming back to see her, but also knows the likeliness of that happening.
“Your Mama is probably worried sick about you.” Ellie chastises, knowing as she looks at JJ’s guilty face that he also just considered that point. She may be at work, but his friends running back screaming would definitely call attention to his disappearance.
As he nods his head slowly, she stands from the table and moves to him. His plate is empty, the fruit devoured by the hungry boy. “Let’s get you home.”
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The walk back to the gates of Jackson is so much longer than it needs to be, it’s less than a ten minute walk, but walking with Jesse Joel takes an hour.
He’s full of questions, and if this is going to be the last time Ellie is allowed to see him, she wants to answer all of them for the little boy. Her son deserves that.
“How did you meet my Mama? Was it love already?”
She tells him tales of her, Dina and Jesse. An unlikely trio. She talks about their first kiss, and their second kiss (leaving out the part about the weed). She tells him how Dina always saved her ass. She tries not to be embarrassed when she talks about finding out Dina was pregnant, and her horrid reaction.
“Did you want to be a Mommy when I came along?”
Ellie gushes about how nervous she was, how scared she was of having a baby around, but that she took one look at him and loved him with her entire heart. He holds her hand, her permanently injured one, delicately as they walk together side by side.
Jesse Joel talks about his life in Jackson, how he lives with his Mama, Granny and Pop-Pop. He talks about the boys that ran away earlier, and says things about them that make Ellie nearly snort in laughter.
“Why do you not want to be in our family anymore? You never came back. Did we do something bad?”
Ellie drops to her knees immediately, they’re right outside of town but she can’t go any further without addressing it. She grabs him by the shoulders and pulls him into her arms and commands him to listen with a scratchy voice and tears threatening to fall.
“You were never bad, you could never be bad.” She shakes his arms just slightly, determined to drive the point home. “You and your Mama are the two best people that could ever exist in this world, do you understand me, it’s me… I’m the bad one, okay?”
JJ touches Ellie’s face gently, running his finger over scars and tear stains, her lips tight. “Couldn’t you try to be good? That way you can come home.”
He has an innocence about him that devastates Ellie. She’s about to open her mouth and promise him that she will do whatever he wants her too, when they hear a scream of JJ’s name and running towards them.
Ellie barely has time to look up before she sees Dina, throwing herself through the gates and sprinting to them. She can see the terror on the woman’s face, and she instinctively but hesitantly lets go of Jesse Joel as his Mother reaches him and pulls him into her arms desperately, clinging to the little boy.
It’s a chaos filled minute; Dina yelling at Jesse Joel about how much trouble he’s in, and how he knows better than to leave the safety of the gates. JJ is desperately defending himself, trying to tell her that the older boys told him that it was okay.
They both stop talking for a moment when Dina fully takes in the sight of Ellie, her face growing stony and her eyes glistening over. “You…” She whispers.
Ellie immediately feels under fire, lifting her hands into the air, eyes pleading with Dina. She had no part of this. “I didn’t hurt him, Dina, I swear to god.” She begs, not knowing if after five and a half years she even has any right to be near either of them.