by Carly Bloom
“Her grandma?” Casey repeated. “You’re saying Aunt Mavis is her grandma—”
Aunt Mavis had one son. And it was his ass-wipe cousin or uncle or whatever he was, Wade.
The room felt like it flipped sideways as things clicked into place. Casey jumped to his feet in a blinding fit of white rage. That goddamn asshole. He started to shake. He needed to punch something, but instead he pulled Jess to her feet, and through clenched teeth, he said, “He…touched you? How? When?”
The room went totally still. She’d been eighteen. Eighteen! He wrapped his arms around her. No wonder they’d left town that way. Her mom had to protect her.
“Casey, not me.”
Jessica was saying something. He let go and stared into her eyes. Her sweet, sweet eyes. Swallowed down another lump.
“My mom,” she said. “Hope is my sister.”
Gabriel came around his desk. “Have a seat, Casey. I’m so sorry. I misspoke.”
“I’m her sister,” Hope said, smiling proudly.
Casey sat down. He had no choice, since his knees had basically given out.
Jessica sat too, and her small hand took hold of his.
He tried to wrap his mind around what he’d just learned. Wade had been having an affair—or something—with Jessica’s mom. He’d gotten her pregnant. And she had taken Jessica and left Big Verde without telling a soul where they were going.
“Did you not read the letters, Casey?”
Jessica’s face. He focused on that. Why were her eyes tearing up?
“What letters?”
“I suspect these are the letters right here,” Gabriel said, holding up five envelopes, all covered in hand-drawn hearts and stamped and addressed to Casey Long.
All were still sealed.
“Where did you get those?” Jessica asked.
“From Mavis,” Gabriel said. He handed them to Casey.
Eighteen-year-old Jessica’s swirly-girlie handwriting stared up at him. Casey took a deep breath, and with shaking fingers, he popped a kissy-lips seal that would have made him laugh on any other occasion.
“Is it okay for me to read these?” he suddenly asked Jessica.
“Yes, of course,” Jessica said. But then she looked at the envelopes with their hearts and flowers and kissy-lips and added, “But maybe not this very minute.”
Casey wanted to rip into them as if they contained the secret to immortality or the cure for cancer, but Jessica’s cheeks were pink and getting pinker. So, he casually tucked them into his shirt pocket and gave them a gentle pat.
“I don’t understand,” Jessica said. “How did Mavis end up with those letters?”
Casey explored his memories from twelve years ago, the summer of his graduation. Everything was a blur of pain and panic, because Jessica had disappeared, but he remembered that his parents had gone to Europe. It was supposed to have been a graduation trip for Casey, but he’d been too crushed and depressed to go. He’d stayed home, and Aunt Mavis had come by every day to check on him and other things.
Like the mail.
Gabriel pulled another envelope out of his desk. “I suspect this will explain everything.”
There was another letter?
“I had assumed we were here for a reading of Mavis’s will,” Jess said. And then she quickly added, “Because of Hope.”
Gabriel laughed softly. “That only happens in the movies. I mean, I have your copy of the will right here. And I’m happy to go over it with you, if you need me to. Mavis left Hope very well cared for. But you were both called here today because Mavis wanted you and Casey in the same room while I read you this.”
Gabriel cleared his throat dramatically. “Dear Jessica and Casey, this is an apology for a terrible thing I have done…”
* * *
Five minutes later, everyone sat quietly, digesting what they’d just heard. Jessica anxiously bit her lip and tried to remain in her seat. Because what she wanted to do was jump up and down and stomp her feet, and that wasn’t appropriate at all.
Mavis had intercepted the letters. She’d known about Wade’s misdeed and had been afraid Jessica would tell Casey, and then he’d tell someone, and they’d tell someone…
Honestly, Mavis might have been right. They’d been teenagers, and there had been too much at stake. Way more than simply the Long family’s reputation.
Casey sighed and leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees, shaking his head. “I just don’t know how my family could have done yours any more wrong.”
“In her confession, Mavis asked for our forgiveness. I loved her way too much not to give it to her,” Jessica said.
Casey looked at her as if she had two heads. “You really did love her, didn’t you?”
“I really did.”
And Mavis wasn’t the only person she’d loved in Big Verde. What she’d felt for Casey had not been a teenage crush. And what she felt for him now was even stronger. From the moment he’d walked in the room and enveloped her in his arms, she’d felt safe. And for her, that was a strong and rare emotion.
She’d been adrift for twelve years, and Casey was an anchor. She couldn’t stand the thought of leaving him again, but she couldn’t conceive of a way around it.
“Man,” Carmen said. “You folks certainly know how to dish out the drama in this town.”
Upon hearing the word drama, Hope put a hand to her forehead, as if she were about to swoon. Carmen had taught her to do that whenever someone was being overly dramatic. It made Gabriel laugh and relieved at least some of the tension in the room. And when Hope’s stomach chose that moment to growl loudly, that relieved the rest.
“Somebody’s hungry,” Jessica said. “Should we head to Corner Café for a late breakfast?” She wanted to spend as much time as possible with Casey before heading back to Houston.
A little spark of panic fluttered in her chest. She clutched his hand tightly, and it went away.
“Can we make it brunch?” Carmen asked. “I have a bit of business with Mr. Castro here.”
Jessica looked at Gabriel. Was Carmen kidding?
“She’s my ten o’clock appointment,” he said.
What possible business could Carmen need to conduct in Big Verde that involved a lawyer? Whatever it was, Jessica recognized her friend’s stubborn impish grin. There was no point in asking. She wouldn’t get it out of her. Not right now anyway.
Chapter Thirteen
Jessica looked out the front window of the Corner Café. A girl who looked about sixteen was busy scrubbing off green shoe polish that spelled out BEAT THE BADGERS!
“Well,” she asked Casey. “Did they?”
“Did who what?”
“Did the Big Verde Giants beat the Badgers on Friday?”
Sally Larson, owner of the diner, refilled their coffee cups. “You’re kidding, right?” she asked, not even bothering to pretend she wasn’t listening to their conversation. “Darlin’, the last time the Big Verde Giants beat the Badgers was 1979.”
“Oh. Well, there’s always next year.”
“That’s the cheerleader spirit,” Sally said, pretending to wipe crumbs off the table. She’d been hovering around their booth like a bee bothering a honeysuckle vine since the moment they sat down. Big Verde had a weekly newspaper, but Sally Larson was the Official Town Gossip, a role she took seriously.
“Homecoming is next week,” Casey said. “We’re playing the Sweet Home Beavers.”
“Do they still write LICK THE BEAVERS! on all the windows?”
“Now, Jess, why wouldn’t they?” Casey asked, feigning innocence.
When they were in school, everyone had pretended not to know what it meant, and Jessica was pleased the tradition of playing dumb lived on.
“Lick the Beavers!” Hope cheered.
“Oh, dear,” Jessica said.
Sally snorted and headed for the kitchen, where Rusty, the cook, had just hit the bell. “Order up!”
Homecoming. There was just something about
the Friday night lights of the field, the announcer’s voice echoing through the big speakers, the sharp drum cadence of the school fight song…
“It sure would be fun to take Hope to a game,” she said.
“Why don’t you come down?” Casey asked.
“I don’t know. It’s typically pretty hard to get away from work on a weekend.”
“I’ll get you a mum,” Casey said, blue eyes twinkling.
“What about me?” Hope asked.
“You too. The biggest mum I can find.”
Hope clapped her hands. “Yay! What’s a mum?”
Sally came back to the table, balancing a huge tray. She set a short stack of pancakes in front of Hope, huevos rancheros in front of Casey, and scrambled eggs, sausage, and buttered grits in front of Jessica. It all smelled delicious, and for the next few minutes they ate in silence, except for the occasional groan of delight.
“Are you going to eat that last piece of bacon?” Jessica asked, pointing at Casey’s plate with her fork.
“Damn, woman. You always could pack it away.”
Jessica looked at her plate, which was practically licked clean. “Don’t judge,” she said. “I’m an emotional eater.”
Casey put his hands up. “No judgment,” he said. “And you’re welcome to eat my bacon.”
Jessica’s fork stopped midway to his plate. Why had that sounded so dirty? She glanced up and was met by a cocked eyebrow and sexy smirk. Because he’d meant it to sound dirty.
Suddenly, Hope snatched the bacon with her chubby little hand and hightailed it to the other side of the diner.
“Sheriff,” Sally said. “We have a bacon bandit!”
* * *
Casey watched Hope settle into a corner booth with her stolen goods.
“It’s not even her first offense,” Jess said, standing up.
“Sit back down,” Sally said. She held up a handful of crayons and a piece of paper. “She can stay in her own booth and give y’all some privacy.”
Jess sat, but she bit her lip, glancing nervously at Hope in the corner.
“She’ll be fine over there,” Casey said. “I’ve got my eye on her.”
The tension across Jessica’s brow disappeared, and she stopped gnawing on her lip. “It’s such a relief to not have to watch her like a hawk everywhere I go,” she said. “Believe me. In Houston, she would not be sitting in a restaurant at her very own table. I can’t let her out of my sight.”
Casey couldn’t imagine the stress Jessica had been under all these years, particularly the last two, where she’d been responsible for Hope by herself. “It must be hard,” he said.
Carmen seemed like a good friend, but Casey couldn’t help but feel that Jessica’s life would be easier in a small community like Big Verde, where everyone looked out for each other. At the idea of Jessica and Hope living in Big Verde, Casey’s heart thudded around his chest like a battering ram. Would the thought occur to Jessica, as well?
“You have no idea how hard,” Jessica said. “The school bus used to drop her off at our apartment. But since Mom died, she goes to an after-school program. She hates it. But she can’t always be at work with me, and I can’t always be at home.”
“You don’t have any place like Hope House in Houston? A teacher walks Dalton and some other kids over after school. It’s right across the street.”
“Oh, there are lots of great places. But they’re not near La Casa Bleu or Hope’s school, and Houston traffic is horrendous. It’s not like I can just get her somewhere in ten minutes.”
Casey wanted to point out that you could get from one end of Big Verde to the other in under ten minutes, but he didn’t want to sound as desperate as he felt.
He reached across the table and took both of Jess’s hands in his. Now that they’d finished eating, and they had a modicum of privacy—Sally pretended to adjust the blinds in the booth behind them—it was time to take on the elephant in the room.
“Your mom was undocumented?”
Jessica stared at the cup of coffee in front of her. “Yes,” she whispered.
“It must be hard to talk about something you’d been forbidden to speak of for so long. But there’s nothing to be ashamed of, Jess.”
“I didn’t know her status when we lived in Big V. And I’m glad I didn’t. Because at least for my childhood, I didn’t live in fear. In Houston, every day was filled with dread and anxiety. I was terrified of coming home to find Mom gone and Hope all alone in the apartment.”
“I wish you’d told me. Maybe my family could have helped. There’s something called asylum—”
“She did ask someone from your family for help. That’s how she met Wade. She naively assumed the county sheriff would know how to get her on a path to citizenship.”
Wade. Casey was going to have a hard time not punching the guy the next time he saw him.
He wanted to soothe Jess with words like what’s passed is past and you’re safe now. But he knew from trauma training that those words were hollow. Jessica needed time. And someone to talk to.
And that led to the one burning question tumbling around inside his mouth, waiting for an opportunity to spill out. “When are you heading back to Houston?”
“We have a two o’clock checkout,” Jess said. “That is, if Carmen makes it back in time.”
“What the hell kind of business could she be stirring up with Gabe?”
“Oh, it could be anything, really. Somebody texted or e-mailed or called about an emergency involving rights or insurance or contracts and voilà! She’s sitting in front of a lawyer. It happens all the time. Her life is crazy.”
“I bet that means your life in Houston is also crazy.”
Jess took a sip of coffee, and Sally topped it off again. “Let’s just say I’ve enjoyed this weekend in Big Verde. I mean, we’ve definitely had some excitement—”
Casey laughed at the understatement.
“But it’s a different kind,” Jessica said. “I’ve missed this place.”
Casey swallowed. How could this work out? “Jess, I don’t want to lose you again,” he whispered.
Sally, who was now pretending to clean a spotless table nearby, sniffled loudly.
“And I don’t want to lose you again, either,” Jess said, squeezing his hand.
“You say you missed Big Verde. That you had never wanted to leave.”
“And that’s all true. But there’s also reality to consider.”
“The reality is that you and I were torn apart by our families. We had plans, Jess. Plans to be together. And as far as I know, neither one of us intentionally changed them.”
Jess took a deep breath.
Dammit. She was going to say something reasonable.
“I’m raising a Down syndrome child by myself. Thanks to Carmen, I’m able to do it on a good salary. I do love Big Verde. But what would I do here? Where would I work? And, Casey—”
Sally stopped wiping the table, and Jessica lowered her voice to a whisper. “We don’t really know each other anymore. We’re not eighteen.”
Casey shook his head and took a couple of seconds to gather his thoughts. She still had feelings for him, that was obvious. And he’d never stopped loving her. Letting her walk out of his life again, without even trying to pick up where they’d left off, seemed like a catastrophic mistake. “I know damn well how old we are. But we do know each other. Shit, you made me who I am today. How can you say you don’t know me?”
Sally approached with her goddamn coffeepot.
Casey held up his hand. “Not now, Sally.”
“Hope!” Jessica stood swiftly, and Casey did the same, without even knowing why.
“I got it, sweetheart,” Sally said.
Hope had somehow ended up behind the counter. She was straightening the napkin holders and condiments. Putting them all in a row. Sally praised her for tidying up. “Do you like to put things in nice, neat rows?”
“Sally volunteers at Hope House,” Casey assured Je
ss.
“These are crooked,” Hope said. Then she went to work making sure everything lined up, poking her tongue out of one corner of her mouth from the effort.
Jess sat back down with a sigh, and so did Casey.
“Listen,” Casey said. “We’ll work it out. There are five-star restaurants in Austin where you could work. That’s not too far away. We just have to iron out some details is all.”
Jess began frantically twisting a strand of her hair. “I’m not sure Carmen can live without me.”
Casey leaned across the table. Kissed her on the nose and watched her blush. “I’m the one who can’t live without you. I’ll cancel my reelection campaign. At the end of this term, I can move to Houston, if you want me to.”
Boom. He hadn’t meant to say it. Hadn’t even thought about it. But as he watched the tears build up in Jessica’s sweet brown eyes, he realized that’s what made it honest. Every word had come straight from the heart.
He’d follow her anywhere, because dammit, they deserved to be together.
Forever.
* * *
Jessica couldn’t believe her ears. And yet, Casey gazed at her with a fierce intensity that said he meant business.
The man was serious. He was willing to leave his career and home to be with her.
Sally stood wide-eyed, clutching the coffeepot like it was a life preserver and the Corner Café was the Titanic. Rusty stared openly from the other side of the counter, spatula suspended in midair.
These were Casey’s people. How could she live with herself if she took him away from Big Verde? But how could she live if she had to do it without Casey?
The little bell above the door jingled. Sally wiped her nose on the back of her hand and reached for a stack of menus. Not that anybody in Big Verde needed one.
Then she gasped at the sight of Carmen breezing in.
“I was hoping I’d still find you two here,” Carmen said, yanking out a seat.
“Oh, my,” Sally said. “Are you who I think you are? Well, of course you are. That’s a silly question, isn’t it? I’d heard you were in town. Can I get you some coffee? A Danish maybe?”
“Both of those things sound delightful,” Carmen said. “And do you have anything weird for me to try?”