Loving Jessie

by Dallas Schulze

  “Did you ever meet my mother?” Matt asked into the silence.

  Jessie nodded, not sure if she was relieved or sorry. “Once, when I was maybe twelve or thirteen. Reilly’s mom took me shopping for school clothes, and we ran into your mom at Penney’s.” She narrowed her eyes as if trying to bring the memory into focus. “I don’t remember her very well. She was very quiet, but I remember getting the feeling that Mrs. McKinnon didn’t—” She stopped abruptly.

  “Didn’t like her?” Matt finished the sentence for her.

  Jessie nodded uneasily. “She didn’t say anything to me, of course, but it was pretty obvious how she felt. I think it was the first time I realized that grown-ups could dislike each other the same way kids did, so it stuck in my mind. I don’t think your mother noticed anything, though,” she said reassuringly.

  “If it was past noon, then she probably wouldn’t have noticed if Libby McKinnon spat in her eye,” Matt said dryly. Jessie looked confused, and he sighed. He hated talking about his childhood, hated thinking about it. For years he’d told himself it was dead and buried, no longer an issue. Apparently he’d been wrong. “My mother was rarely sober past noon, Jessie. She was a drunk. I don’t think I ever saw her completely sober, though she usually managed to hold it together pretty well during the day.”

  He saw her eyes widen in shocked surprise and looked away before he could see the pity that inevitably came next. Crossing his arms over his chest, he leaned back against the counter, wrapping himself in the careful indifference he’d perfected years ago.

  “Matt, I…” Jessie stopped and tried to find the right words. Though he acted like it didn’t matter, she didn’t need psychic ability to sense that there were layers of old pain behind his indifference. “Alcoholism is a disease,” she said finally, weakly.

  “So it is, and I suppose I’d be more sympathetic if she’d ever made an effort to quit, but she didn’t.” His voice was sharp with old anger. “She preferred looking at the world through a vodka haze. I guess it made it easier to ignore the sound of her husband beating the crap out of their sons.” He ignored her horrified gasp, his voice taking on a razor-sharp edge of bitter humor as he continued. “Dad’s preferred drink was whiskey, though he was willing to make do with bourbon in a pinch. He might even have shared Mom’s vodka if she hadn’t been so good at hiding the bottles.”

  “Beating…oh, Matt.” Her knees suddenly weak, Jessie sank down on one of the kitchen chairs. “I didn’t know,” she whispered. “I didn’t know.”

  “Almost no one did.” Matt stared at the colorful array of magnets on the refrigerator as if trying to memorize their exact placement. A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Libby McKinnon suspected, I think. A few times, she tried to get me to talk to her, but I wouldn’t say anything. I think, if I had, if I’d told her what was going on, she would have done something, gone to the authorities.”

  “Why didn’t you tell her? Tell someone?” Jessie tucked her shaking hands between her knees. “Surely you didn’t want to stay there.”

  Matt shook his head. “I was a kid, Jessie. I didn’t reason it out. Our home life might have sucked, but it was the only thing I knew. And I half thought it was my fault.”

  “Your fault?” Jessie’s head jerked up, and he lifted a hand to stave off her indignation.

  “If I was…bad or had done something to deserve what was happening, then it wasn’t quite so frightening. It wasn’t as scary as admitting that my parents were pretty much worthless.”

  She stared at him, trying to imagine him as a child, trying to imagine what it would be like to grow up in the kind of household he was describing. She’d lost her parents at an early age, but her memories of them had been full of love and warmth.

  “Matt, I… I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged. “It was a long time ago, and it wasn’t all bad. I had Gabe, and he always did his best to look out for me. There wasn’t much he could do when we were little, but when he was sixteen, he came home from basketball practice and caught Dad beating the hell out of me for something, God knows what. I guess something just snapped, because Gabe took the belt away from him and told him that if he ever hit me again, he was going to feed it to him, buckle and all. I guess the old man believed him, because a few days later he left for work one morning and forgot to come home.”

  “Did you…were you sorry he was gone?” Jessie asked hesitantly. “I mean, I know he…but he was your father.”

  “Honor thy parents?” Matt asked sardonically.

  “No. Not that. But just because he was…what he was, it doesn’t mean that you didn’t—love isn’t always logical,” she finished awkwardly.

  “All I felt was relief,” he said flatly. “When I realized he wasn’t coming back, it was like I opened my eyes and saw the sun shine for the first time in my life. Everything was going to be different now. The monster was gone, and the three of us could be a real family.”

  There was bitter humor in his voice, old anger in his eyes. He straightened away from the counter with an abrupt move that made Jessie flinch. She’d never seen him like this, never guessed that he kept this kind of rage bottled up inside. Of the two of them, Reilly had been the volatile one, quick to laugh, quick to anger. Matt had always been steady, the one you could count on to always be there when you needed him.

  “I thought my mother would be glad he was gone,” Matt continued in that same almost light tone. “As far as I know, he’d never hit her, but they fought like cats and dogs, and he made no secret of his contempt for her. I figured, now that he was gone, she would crawl out of the bottle and become a real mom.”

  He paced over to the back door, his movements quick and jerky, lacking his usual easy grace. He stared out into the darkness for a moment, his shoulders hunched. Jessie fought the urge to go to him, to slide her arms around his waist and tell him to stop talking about it, stop remembering. Something told her he needed to do this, not because he owed her an explanation for his earlier outburst but because he’d been keeping the memories bottled up inside for a very long time. Maybe it was time to drag them out into the light.

  Matt spoke without turning. “When she realized he wasn’t coming back, she was furious. Do you know why?”

  Jessie shook her head, realized he couldn’t see her and had to swallow hard before she could get her voice to work. “Why?”

  “Because Gabe had made him leave.” Matt turned to look at her, his mouth twisted in a half smile that held no humor. “She said he’d had no right to threaten his father. I think she even called him an unnatural child. It was all Gabe’s fault that the old man was gone and she was alone. I guess the two of us didn’t count. Even better, it turned out that she didn’t even need the old man’s money to get by. She had a trust fund she’d inherited from a great-aunt that was more than enough to support the three of us, so she hadn’t even stayed with the bastard because she couldn’t support us without him. She stayed because being married to him was better than being single. The fact that he beat her kids just didn’t enter into the picture.”

  “Oh, Matt.” Jessie searched for something positive to say. No matter what she’d been or what she’d done, this was his mother they were talking about, and she’d been raised to believe that you didn’t make nasty remarks about other people’s relatives. But, in the end, she could only come up with the truth. “She sounds like a selfish bitch.”

  Matt looked startled, and then his mouth curved in a genuine smile. “She was. Probably still is, for that matter. I haven’t seen her since she moved to Florida fifteen years ago. She sends a Christmas card, in care of the agency, and they forward it to me. There’s never a note, just her signature. Not that I want to hear from her, but I sometimes wonder if she even remembers who I am or if I’m just another name on her Christmas list.”

  “Well, I can certainly understand why you didn’t want me to invite her for Thanksgiving,” Jessie said briskly. “And if I ever see her, I might not be able to resist the urge to punch her i
n the nose.”

  Matt laughed. “I’d pay to see that.”

  Seeing the tension ease from his shoulders, Jessie gave in to the urge to go to him, sliding her arms around his waist and pressing her cheek to his chest, hugging him tightly. She felt his slight hesitation before his arms came up to hold her, his hands settling on the small of her back.

  Matt rested his cheek against the top of her head, inhaling the warm scent of her—shampoo and chocolate and lemon, and something soft and sweet that was just Jessie.

  She lifted her head from his chest, leaning back against his hold far enough to look up into his face. “Why didn’t you just tell me about your mother? About the kind of person she was?”

  “You mean instead of blowing up and storming out of here like an idiot?” he asked.

  “Well…I didn’t say it. You did.” She smiled, but there was still a question in her eyes.

  He lifted one hand to smooth her hair back from her forehead, feeling it curl around his fingers like warm silk. “I don’t like talking about my childhood.” Matt smiled a little grimly at his own understatement. “I don’t like thinking about my childhood. And I don’t think about it most of the time. It was…not a good thing. I guess I just really hated the thought of it intruding on what we have. On what we’re building here.”

  “I can understand that, I guess.” She brushed her hand over his chest, smoothing out an imaginary wrinkle in the thin knit of his T-shirt. “I just wondered if it was something else,” she said slowly, keeping her eyes on her hand.

  “Like what?”

  “Well, like maybe you thought that I might think differently about you because of your childhood.” She looked at him suddenly, her dark eyes almost fierce. “Because I’d really hate it if you thought I was that shallow.”

  “You know I don’t think you’re shallow, Jessie.”

  She heard the qualifier in his voice and her hand stilled on his chest. “But?”

  “I…” Matt drew a deep breath and stepped back so that they were no longer touching.

  “But?” she repeated, her fine brows drawing together.

  “Look, the truth is, I come from a miserable background. Both my parents were alcoholics, Jess. The fact that they were also assholes is beside the point. There’s plenty of evidence these days to suggest that the tendency to alcoholism is hereditary.”

  “I’ve never seen you drink much,” she pointed out. “And I’ve never seen Gabe drink at all.”

  “That’s because we both know where we came from. I did drink quite a bit in college, but I realized it was too easy, too comfortable. Frankly, it scared the hell out of me. I was afraid I’d look in the mirror someday and see my father looking back at me.” He ran his hand through his hair, trying to find the words to say what he’d realized had to be said, what his outburst tonight had made him realize should have been said before he asked her to marry him. “You married me because you wanted a baby, but the truth is, I might not be a really great genetic risk. You should think—wooff!”

  Considering her size, she packed quite a punch, he thought as he probed his stomach with careful fingers. He eyed her uneasily. From the look in her eyes, she was not opposed to hitting him again.

  “Okay, so maybe I didn’t say it quite right, but I just thought you should know what you might be getting into if we—hey!” He held up his hands and took a quick, prudent step back, putting himself—and his abdomen—out of her reach. “Okay. Fine. Forget I mentioned it.”

  “I will.” Jessie glared at him, her hands still clenched into fists. “I can’t believe you could say something that stupid. I suppose you were going to offer to divorce me or send me off to a sperm bank or something.”

  “Well, no, I hadn’t thought—”

  “That’s perfectly obvious,” she said with withering sarcasm. “Because if you’d given it any thought at all, you’d know that I don’t give a…a hoot about your childhood. Well, I do. Give a hoot, I mean, because I hate it that you were unhappy, but I don’t care what your parents were or what they did, except that it wasn’t good for you. And it’s just stupid to worry about our child becoming an alcoholic, because even if he inherited a tendency that way, it doesn’t mean he’d give in to it. You haven’t. And Gabe hasn’t. Don’t!” She backed away when he started to reach for her, only then realizing that her eyes were full of tears and her voice was shaking with more than just anger. “I want to get this all out.” She swiped angrily at the moisture in her eyes and glared at him. “If you ever say anything that stupid again, if you ever even think anything that stupid, I’m going to…to…well, I’ll think of something really awful to do to you. Do you hear me? Something really, really awful.”

  “I hear you.” Matt’s mouth quirked with tender humor. “Something really, really awful.”

  “And I mean it.”

  “I know you do. I’m shaking in my boots. Can’t you tell?” Ignoring her halfhearted attempts at resistance, he pulled her into his arms.

  “You’re not wearing boots,” she mumbled against his chest. Her fingers curled into his shirt, and she allowed a tear or two to fall.

  “Yeah, but saying that I’m shaking in my Nikes just doesn’t have the same ring to it.”

  “I guess not.” She relaxed against him. “Matt, I didn’t marry you just because I wanted a baby.”

  “No?” He slid his fingers through her hair, feeling oddly relaxed now that the emotional crisis was past. Maybe there was something to this whole catharsis thing. “Then why have I been working so hard to get you pregnant? Ouch!”

  Jessie released her pinching fingers but didn’t bother to lift her head from his chest. “If all I wanted was a baby, I didn’t have to get married to get one. When you asked me to marry you, I realized that I liked the idea of having the whole package—a home and a family, someone to share it all with. And I couldn’t imagine anyone I’d rather have it with.”

  Matt closed his eyes, his arms tightening around her as something sweet and warm unfurled in his chest. Home, he thought. This was what it meant. It wasn’t a place. It was this feeling of acceptance, of welcome, this sense of belonging. Jessie had given him that.

  He slid his hands into her hair, cupping her head and tilting her face up until her eyes met his. “You know, I’ve been thinking about this whole baby thing.”

  “Thinking about it?”

  He brushed his thumb over the softness of her lower lip. “I was thinking maybe we should try making a baby in some really creative place.”

  Jessie’s eyes widened as possibilities flashed through her mind, each more lurid than the last. “I’m not having sex on the roof,” she said firmly.

  “That’s not what I meant.” One hand slid down her back, his fingers splaying open over the curve of her bottom, rocking her forward against his growing arousal. “I meant a place that encourages creativity.”

  “Oh.” Jessie’s fingers curled into the solid muscles of his shoulders, her lashes drifting closed as hunger fluttered to life in the pit of her stomach. “I’m not having sex in an art supply store, either.”

  Her breath left her on a sigh as Matt’s teeth caught her lower lip, worrying it gently for a moment before his tongue soothed the sensual little pain. Jessie’s knees went weak, and she sagged against him, letting him support her weight.

  “I was thinking of something a little closer to home.” His mouth opened over hers, taking possession, tasting the heat of her response. Lost in his kiss, Jessie didn’t realize that he was moving her backward until she felt the kitchen counter against the small of her back. She gasped as Matt’s hands gripped her waist, lifting her and setting her down on the counter. “Something much closer to home,” he murmured wickedly.

  “Here?” Sitting on the counter, her eyes were level with his, and she stared at him, caught between shock and excitement.

  “I’ve always thought you were very creative in the kitchen.” His eyes gleamed with humor and need, and a dark heat that melted every bone in her
body. “Let’s see if we can’t whip up something even more interesting than a cheesecake.”

  “I don’t know, Matt. I… Oh my.” Her head fell back, her nails digging into his shoulders as his hands slid under her loose sweater to cup her bare breasts. “It’s…it’s a little… Please, I can’t think when you do that,” she moaned.

  “Don’t think.” The sweater landed on the floor behind him, baring her to his hands and his mouth. Oh God, his mouth.

  Jessie’s hands slid into the silky darkness of his hair, her head falling back as she arched into his touch.

  “Don’t think, Jessie,” he whispered against her skin. “Just feel.”

  She was helpless to do anything else.

  Chapter Fourteen

  For the first few years after Jessie went to live with her grandfather, Leland Sinclair had labored in the kitchen each Thanksgiving and Christmas, struggling to produce a traditional holiday feast. But the same hands that could coax a desiccated stick into green and blooming life became the fingers of death in the kitchen. Dry turkeys, underdone geese, sticky-sweet hams and many a casserole composed of green beans, mushroom soup and canned onions had appeared, in all their tattered glory, on the dining-room table.

  Because she loved her grandfather, Jessie had masticated her way through every painful bite. Then, with the money Reilly’s parents gave her for her eleventh birthday, she bought a copy of the latest edition of Fannie Farmer’s much-revised cookbook, and that year, with her grandfather in the role of sous chef, she prepared Thanksgiving dinner. It wasn’t a meal to make the Michelin Guide people sit up and take notice, but it was edible. Parts of it were even genuinely good. Her grandfather’s praise was lavish and sincere, and, to their mutual relief, the kitchen became her undisputed domain. What had begun as self-preservation blossomed into a hobby and, eventually, a career of sorts.