I’d grown up here.
But I was unsure of what to expect. It’d been too long. I didn’t know what was waiting for me on the other side of the door.
But I also had a date with destiny. I needed to face my past here so I could finally reveal the truth to Zora, in its entirety.
Several seconds passed, with no indication of movement from inside. I’d just raised my hand to knock one last time, now almost eager to return to my truck, when I heard the tumblers in the lock engage. The door swung inward.
Ellie Leffersbee stood on the other side.
Her face didn’t register any surprise. She craned her neck up at me, blinking against the strong, mid-afternoon sun. New lines extended from the corners of her dark eyes. I’d never realized just how much Zora looked like her until this moment.
“Nick Armstrong.”
“Yes, ma’am.” My voice came out rusty.
“Well, you look like you grew up fine.”
“I hope so.” My heart beat a little harder. I casted around for the right words to say, to offer to the now painful silence, and came up empty.
A smile split her face. “Get over here and hug me, boy!” She threw the dishtowel in her hand over one shoulder and threw open her arms to me.
Relief and gratitude rushed through me. I bent to enfold her in my arms. That familiar scent I’d always imagined as powdered doughnuts surrounded me. And just like that, I was back to all the comforts of my childhood, returned to the origin of all that I was.
“Come inside.” She grinned even wider before gesturing for me to follow her into the house. “I was wondering how long it would take you to get here. I imagine you and Zora have tortured each other sufficiently? Needed a breather?”
“Uh . . .” Was she psychic? She’d already known I was here? Had Zora told her mother I’d seen her without pants yesterday?
I followed Mrs. Leffersbee as she led me from the foyer, past the formal dining and sitting rooms to the kitchen. Even now, all these years later, I could navigate this house blindfolded.
“Sit down,” she said, gesturing to the kitchen table as she headed to the fridge. “Sweet tea?”
“Yes, ma’am.” I looked around the kitchen where I’d taken so many meals with Zora and her family. Much of it was the same, save for new cabinets and flooring. But this wood table, scarred and faded in places, was the same. I lowered myself onto the end of the long bench and my knees only just made it under the table. I ran a thumb across that warped spot I remembered.
And the honeybees were still here, tucked all around the kitchen. Ceramic bees, glass bees, gold bees. When I was a teenager, I’d asked Mrs. Leffersbee if her fascination with bees started after she acquired her husband’s last name.
“After, of course,” she’d said. “I thought it would be best to celebrate having a new, peculiar last name. As time went on, I learned how fitting it was.” Her voice had lost some of its light. “Sometimes being a Leffersbee means taking a few stings before you get any honey.”
She hadn’t smiled when she said that.
The bulletin board next to the fridge memorialized past events and Leffersbee accomplishments. I took in the pictures and papers jockeying for position on the crammed corkboard. Faded programs for Audre’s high school graduation, an award ceremony for Walker’s photography. Newspaper clippings about Zora’s research. Tavia’s new employee bio from an accounting firm in New York. Ah, and the funeral program for Bethany Winston.
Seeing this reminder of Bethany’s death made me ache with missing my own mother. I wished there was still a place I could go to see Lila Rossi again, somewhere like this, where we could be surrounded by our history together.
So much had changed.
Zora was right. I’d never looked back.
“Hard to believe isn’t it?”
I startled as Mrs. Leffersbee drew near and set a glass of sweet tea at my elbow.
“That she’s been gone this long?”
I looked back at the smiling photo of Bethany. Beloved Mother.
“Yeah. It is.”
She returned to the fridge and returned with a plated cake under a glass dome. “I think about her every day, you know?” She took a sip of her own sweet tea, her dark eyes fathomless and fastened to mine. “But you know what? I know Bethany would have gotten a kick out of you being back.” The side-eye she aimed in my direction somehow made me feel she was looking down at me, tiny as she was. “Took you long enough to come see me after you snuck in town.”
I ducked my head. “I’m sorry. I wanted to see you. It’s just . . . it’s just—”
“It’s hard.” She grabbed my hand. It didn’t come close to covering mine. “I know, baby. I can only imagine what’s going through your head, being back here. But you made the trip. Your mama said you would.”
I looked up at that. “What?”
“Oh yeah.” She said it easily, as if stating a simple fact. “She was sure of it. I told her I’d be here to meet you when you did.”
This little woman was the first person in a long time to make me feel something close to shame.
“I should have stayed in contact.”
She only shrugged. “I understand why you didn’t. You were in an impossible position as a young man trying to make his way in the world, figure out who he is. I’ve kept an eye on you through your mother, then Nan.” She leveled a sly glance at me over her glass of iced tea. “I may even have a scrapbook somewhere where I kept track of your accomplishments.”
I hated myself in that moment. “I owe you so much.”
Her back went straight. “You owe us nothing. And don’t let me find another check in the mail. You’re not too big for me to take a strip out of your hind parts.”
I winced, remembering that night. “You paid for everything, for years. Getting us out of town, resettled in Ann Arbor. Rehab for Mom, not once, but twice. My first year of school until the scholarship kicked in. You’ve got to let me—”
“Excuse me, son.” Her eyebrows went up in that smart-ass way I knew. “A few things for you to remember here. First of all, what I do with my money is my business—”
“I’m just saying—”
“What, they interrupt their elders in Michigan? Or wherever it is you’re laying your head nowadays?” When her eyes went wide with mock shock, I cracked up and she soon followed.
“Dear heart, you can’t pay me back. The only reimbursement I’ve ever wanted was to know that you’d taken care of yourself. You’ve done that. You’ve learned a lot and you’ve done well for yourself. I know Lila was proud as a peacock. But you’ve got to get through your head that love doesn’t carry a balance. We did what we did because we love you, and we always will. All that other stuff? Just money. The love Ezra and I have for you will never change, no matter where you are, no matter how much money you have or don’t have. Whether we’re in frequent contact or not.” She gave me that sneaky side-eye again. “Whether you’re with my daughter or not.”
I let out a sigh at the mention of Zora.
She continued on, but we both knew she’d just pulled the pin on a grenade.
“I love you, Nick.” She gripped my hand again, and I held fast to it, and to her words. “You don’t have a choice. So accept it.”
I nodded, swallowing back the sudden tightness in my throat.
She had pity on me and changed the topic. “So. You’ve seen Zora?”
I coughed. “She didn’t tell you?”
She sat back, arms folded, her face full of a cat that ate the canary grin. “I think she was working herself up to tell me the other day, but she lost her nerve. Me, I already knew. I know mostly everything going on in this town.”
I smirked at her superior smile. “Really, now?”
“Yes. But all I really need to know is you, and I’ve been knowing you since you were practically in diapers. Found Zora the first day you were here, didn’t you?”
Damn.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And the two of
you been torturing each other ever since?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She huffed out a laugh. “Some things never change.”
I met her gaze. “No, ma’am. They don’t.”
“What is it you want with my baby, Nick? She’s already turned ’round and confused and trying to work up the courage to make some hard decisions. Don’t make it worse, you hear?”
I nodded.
“I know what kind of man you are. I watched you grow up here in my own house and I know who your mama raised you to be. I know why you’re back, but do you?”
She busied herself with plating cake slices.
I traced the condensation on my glass, absorbed by her question and my answer. “Yeah, I do. I’m ready to face the past. I’d give everything I have for another chance with Zora.” I followed the woodgrain pattern of the table with a finger, unable to meet her eyes while I delivered the naked truth. “When I left here, I left a part of me with her. It’s always been her for me. She’s all I’ve ever wanted. She’s all I’ll ever want.”
“Uh-huh.” I snuck a glance at Ellie and found a smile that contrasted with the obviously manufactured skepticism in her voice. “And you don’t have any of those actresses and models waiting in the wings? Your head’s on straight?”
“Yes, ma’am. My head’s on straight. Straight.” A thought occurred to me. “What do you, uh, think about Jackson James in all this?”
She drowned her expression in her glass of iced tea, took her time gulping a bit more down before swallowing. “Y’all are grown,” she said when she finally surfaced. “I care about Jackson, too. I watched him grow up and he’s become a fine man and is growing into a wonderful sheriff. I don’t know that I should have an opinion one way or the other about any of it.” I wasn’t at all fooled by her philosophical tone, or the mild shrug she sent me. “It’s Zora’s decision. It’ll all work out.”
“He’s not with her, you know.” I made it a statement, but I watched her face for any reaction, any indication of what was really going on between those two.
“I don’t get in grown folks’ business, Nick.” Her guileless smile made me certain she killed at poker.
I heaved a breath, unsurprised at the unsteady, gelatinous state of my gut. All of my supreme CEO courage was nowhere to be found now talking to Zora’s mother. Not when it was about Zora, and when so much was at stake when it came to the future I wanted with her.
Well, and all the positively filthy things I wanted to do to Zora were never all that far from my mind nowadays. Maybe a little fear was appropriate right now.
“You have any advice?”
“Oh, it’s advice you want, do you?” Her smile was like the sun coming out.
“Yes.”
She chewed at her lip. “My advice for you is the same advice I’d give her. Trust yourself. Let down your defenses. Trust you’ll love each other the way you deserve. All that instinct, that knowing you two have always had about what was best for the other? It’s still there.”
Then she leaned forward suddenly, her eyes steady on mine. “And Nick, you were never your father. Never. You didn’t need to change your last name to know that. You hear me?”
It was, perhaps, the most profound thing she could have said, and lifted and eased a weight I’d been carrying ever since that night twelve years ago. I felt somehow freer as I met her solemn dark gaze.
“I hear you.” Several beats of silence descended as we eyed each other.
“Mrs. Leffersbee . . . this won’t be easy. She thinks I moved on with . . .” What had Zora been saying? A redhead? I’d meant to pursue that revelation with a line of questioning, but to be fair, she’d been half-naked and my body had been all busy saying “hell yes,” distracting me. “I have to tell her, I can’t wait anymore—”
She immediately shook her head. “No. Her father and I have to tell her.”
“I have to tell her. It was my decision. It’s my mess. It had to be done, I had to protect her.”
She fixed me with a flinty glare. “What did we tell you? What did we agree that night, and all the other times we talked? If you came back, it would be up to Ezra and me to explain why we’d chosen to withhold the truth.” She gave a short, mirthless laugh. “As it is, the truth feels impossible to explain.”
I was certain my expression held more than a touch of defiance. “Well then, when? Because I can hardly hold off any longer. The more time Zora and I spend together, the harder it is to justify not telling her. I’ve waited twelve years for this moment, and I’m not letting it slip away.”
Her mouth twisted. “We all co-own this. It was our decision then, and I still stand by it. But Zora is my child.”
“I understand, Mrs. Leffersbee—”
Her voice dropped to a dangerous register. “I doubt you do. One day, if you’re lucky, you will have a child. You’ll look into that baby’s face and see your greatest joy and deepest fears. And when your child has her first heartbreak, the echo of it will reverberate in your own heart. You will fervently wish that you could take it away, to somehow make it easier for her. We did what we thought was right that night, but you weren’t the only one who had to live with it. I saw what it did to her, and I had to live with the fact that I had a hand in devastating her. As her mother, as the parents who promised to always protect her, we deserve the opportunity to explain our actions.”
I closed my eyes, prayed for patience, and opened them to find her gaze steady on mine. “When, then?”
She sat back in her chair, suddenly looking tired and ill at ease. “Ezra just left this morning to attend a week-long summit with the Urban League. I’m flying out to meet him tomorrow. When we get back in a little over a week, we’ll do it.”
“I have to be honest. I don’t know that I can wait that long.”
“Well, you waited a good while before now to come back. I have faith that you can hold out just a little bit longer.”
Chapter Seventeen
Zora
“You’re on birth control, right? Hand me that black sweater.”
I stared at the back of Leigh’s head. My mouth fell open.
We’d just completed an exhausting shop-a-thon in Knoxville. Leigh needed the distraction in light of her impending trip back home to New Jersey, and no one loved a mall more than she did. The result of our excursion was a bold new haircut for her, new coppery highlights for me, and a dozen new outfits selected under Leigh’s supervisory eye. It was only once we were both convinced that Nick would eat his words about my “rough edges,” she’d relented and allowed us to leave.
After arriving home, we’d set up camp in Leigh’s side of the duplex for movie night. I knew how much she hated returning to Jersey for family events, so I’d plied her with a few of her favorites: ribs, fries, and pineapple upside-down cake from the Donner Bakery. Now, plates of discarded animal carcass littered her king-sized bed. We’d just finished watching the latest superhero movie, both of us competing to gross the other out with all the kinky things we wanted to do to Superman.
She’d won after suggesting something complicated with beads and I’d drawn the line at letting his rod of steel anywhere near my back door.
Finally, Leigh decided she couldn’t delay anymore and lugged a carry-on container onto the foot of her bed. I watched her roll yoga pants and squish them into the suitcase.
I hated the tight set to her narrow shoulders and the grim purse to her mouth. I’d offered to go with her several times, tried to bully her into letting me support her, but she’d resisted all my efforts. It would kill me to drop her off the next morning, knowing how much family gatherings drained her. She never went back unless there was no way around it. I’d have given anything to make it easier for her.
My mind had been busy with composing a plan to surprise her in Jersey a few days later, so her sudden question was totally out of left field.
“What are you . . .? What?” What had she just said?
“You heard me.” She didn
’t look up as she crossed to her dresser and raided her underwear drawer. “The sweater is on the chair, next to you.”
I snatched her favorite cashmere sweater off the recliner next to her bed and fired it at her head. She ignored its impact, calmly rolling underwear into tiny balls.
“I’m a grown-ass woman, and quite capable of managing my own birth control, thank you.”
She paused in her rolling and straightened to look at me. “You have an IUD, right? The expiration date on that thing still good?”
I looked for something else to throw at her. “Yes, and it’s still working just fine, thank you very much. Though I can’t imagine why you’d be asking about it.”
“It’s a valid question. I’m betting you haven’t had to think about birth control for a while now. This situation? Fertile ground for the ‘surprise baby’ trope in some of my favorite romance novels.” She winked at me. “Pun intended. But yes, this is the kind of question a woman in your position needs to think about.”
“‘A woman in my position’? What’s that supposed to mean?”
She shook her head, fingers busy on the next pair of underwear. “You’re about to sex your ex, even though you know you shouldn’t.” She flicked an idle glance in my direction before continuing on to the next pair with lightning-quick fingers. “I understand. I’ve been there before, and God knows I’ve done it. You’re going to do it too, and you’ll regret it. But I guess you’ve got to get it out of your system.”
I felt almost guilty, trotting out the lie that had to be wearing incredibly thin by now. “I’m with Jackson, you know that—”
“You are not with Jackson. I’m starting to wonder if you ever were. You’re my best friend and I live next door to you. You think I wouldn’t notice that dude’s never here? That you never go anywhere with him anymore? You’re not carrying on a torrid affair in your car. You don’t have the flexibility—”
“Hey.”
“—and I doubt Jackson gets off on dust as an aphrodisiac, so you’re not boning in that landfill of an office. Who are you even pretending for? What, for your parents?” She threw the last ball of underwear in the suitcase and aimed a frown at me. “How do you benefit from this little arrangement?”
Been There Done That Page 19