by Penny Reid
Chapter Six
*Claire*
“You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.”
Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
“Hey, Claire!” Jethro’s voice hollered, scaring the bejeezus out of me and sending a spoonful of cookie dough into the air.
“What the heck?” I glanced around, searching for and not finding him. “Jethro?”
After our unsettling conversation, Jethro and I had chatted until the dishes were done and then he’d joined everyone else to watch a movie in the family room while I’d gone to my room. To hide. That had been yesterday.
Presently, I was back in the basement—which might also be considered the first floor, depending on who you ask—stress-baking in the middle of the night, not yet ready to go to bed after a long day of staying out of Billy Winston’s way.
“Can you go get Duane?” Jethro’s voice asked from somewhere unseen.
I frowned, looking left and right. Wiping my hands on the towel sticking out of my pocket, I walked to the dining room, searching for Jethro. He wasn’t there either.
“Where are you?” I asked the air around me.
“I’m in the crawl space. You can’t see me, but I can see you. Will you go get Duane?”
“In the crawl space? It’s midnight.”
“I know what time it is, Red. You gave me a watch last Christmas. Will you get Duane?”
“Uh. Sure.”
“Thank you.”
I made a face, narrowing my eyes. “This is weird. Like talking to a ghost.”
“WoooOOOOOooooOOOO!” Jethro made his voice vibrate. “It is I! The ghost of this here Italian villa. I command you to remove all bananas from the premises.”
Chuckling at my friend’s persistent dislike for bananas, I made for the stairs. “I’ll be right back, ghost.”
This place was huge, each floor was like its own house, except there was just the one kitchen. But the kitchen had two sets of French doors, opening onto the big stone porch—or, I guess they called it a terrace around here—overlooking the Tuscan hills.
The kitchen level, aka the bottom floor, had three bedrooms, all opening onto the terrace. It also had a dining room and a big family room with a projector for showing movies. Jethro, Sienna, and their boys had claimed two of the three bedrooms, with Maya, Sienna’s sister, taking the third.
On the main level, where the official front door resided, seven bedrooms were spread over two wings. The south wing had a sitting room, a library, and three bedrooms. Jess, Duane, Liam, and Jess’s parents were in the south wing. Now, the north wing also had a sitting room, but it had a music room instead of a library, and four bedrooms. Currently, the north wing was empty, but Cletus and his wife Jenn, Ashley, Drew, and their daughter Bethany, and Beau and his lady friend Shelly were all due to arrive in the next few days.
On the last floor, the top floor, were only two bedrooms—mine and Billy’s—but they were gigantic. The largest rooms in the house, they each had their own balcony, sitting area, desk, bed, and bathroom. I’d tried to insinuate myself into one of the north wing rooms, but Jess asked me to take a large suite on the top floor, explaining that she’d like to share it with me, use it as a place to take a break when she needed one.
I thought that was kind of silly. They were the ones renting the house after all. The big suite should’ve been hers in the first place. Grumbling tiredly, she’d said it all made sense, told me to “just go with it and don’t argue,” and then asked me to hand her the lanolin for her sore nipple.
I didn’t know this, but when women breastfeed, their nipples can get sore and chapped. They use some sort of sheep by-product called lanolin as a moisturizer; it’s safe for the baby.
But enough about sore nipples.
Tiptoeing down the south wing hall, I crept to baby Liam’s room first, cracking the door to see if Duane was in there. He wasn’t, but Jessica and Sienna were, whispering animatedly about something that must’ve been intensely interesting while Sienna held Liam on her shoulder, patting his bottom. Checking his sweet face from my place at the door, I saw he was passed out like a drunk sailor, and I smiled.
That baby was the cutest, I swear. The absolute cutest.
Tearing my eyes from my little love, I glanced between Sienna and Jess. They both seemed entirely absorbed by whatever they were gossiping about, and so I took a step back, not wanting to interrupt and not quite ready to face Sienna yet.
After the last few days, I was still feeling raw.
“Claire?”
I turned at the sound of my name, finding Duane walking toward me.
“Hey, Duane,” I whispered, stepping away from the nursery door. “Jethro is asking for you. He’s in the kitchen crawl space. You know where that is?”
“Ah, okay. Thanks.” Duane glanced between me and the door to the nursery, frowning. “Is something wrong with Liam?”
“Oh. No. Not at all. I was just seeing if you were in there. Jess is inside and Sienna’s rocking Liam. All seems to be well.”
One of his red eyebrows inched up. “Then why do you look so sad?”
“Do I?” I asked, smiling cheerfully.
“You do.” His gaze flickered down, then back up, as though scanning me for a sign of injury. “Is Billy being nice to you? When you bring him his food?”
“Oh, I’m not doing that anymore. Jethro is taking it up.” I paired this with an emphatic nod.
My brother’s gaze narrowed and he crossed his arms, continuing to inspect me. “If he’s not being gentlemanly, you need to let me know. He can be a real grumpy asshole sometimes, and I only agreed to all this ’cause Cletus said y’all were in l—”
“Duane!” The door to the nursery opened suddenly, revealing a manically grinning Jessica. “Duane. What are you doing?” She glanced between us.
My brother shifted his glare to his wife. Though it softened, just a little, the unhappy turn to his mouth didn’t budge. “Jess, someone has to look out for Claire in all this. And you know how Billy can be, taciturn and such. Plus, I’m not sure Cletus is right about—”
Jessica wrapped her hands around my arm and tugged me inside the nursery. “Shut your big, gossipy mouth, Duane Faulkner,” she ordered, releasing me and then stepping back to her husband to wrap her arms around his neck, “or I’ll shut it for you.”
The side of his mouth hitched up and his hands came to her bottom in what looked like an automatic movement. “Go ahead, princess,” he taunted quietly. “Shut me up.”
I saw Jess’s grin in profile, her brown eyes on her husband’s mouth. “Do me a favor, Claire. Close this door.”
I nodded, swiftly shutting the door just as the married couple’s lips met, but was careful to do so silently; I didn’t want to wake the baby. Turning, I faced a smiling Sienna, her eyes dancing as she inspected the door, and then me.
“They’re too cute,” she said, patting the arm of the chair next to her. “Come. Sit with me. Enjoy baby cuddles and my sparkling personality.”
Laughing a nervous laugh, I did as instructed. But I didn’t know what to do with my hands so I tucked them under my legs.
Sienna watched me as I settled myself. I felt her gaze tracking my movements the whole time, and as soon as I lifted my attention to hers, she said, “So, you and Billy, huh?”
I flinched, a lightning bolt of something—amazement? Shock?—making me sit straighter, my mouth dropping open stupidly. “I—I—I—”
“Billy is the guy? The one you were in love with?”
“How—how—”
“So, tell me about that. He was in love with you too, right?”
“How did you find out?” I blurted, finally saying the thing my brain needed me to say.
Sienna shrugged, a small smile on her lips. “You let it slip while you were drunk.”
Before I quite knew what was happening, I said, “It wasn’t his fault. I lied to him, he didn’t know I was married.”
She made a face,
her lips flattening. “Come on. He thought you were engaged, right? He knew you were with someone else. If it’s about fault, you’re both equally to blame. Unless you’re some secret mastermind, manipulating people and pulling their strings from behind the scenes, you can’t take credit for everything. Start from the beginning.”
“The beginning?”
“Yeah. When you came back to Green Valley.”
“Uh, okay.”
Wait. Am I doing this?
I tucked my hair behind my ears, staring forward, my brain stuttering. Am I really doing this? Am I telling Sienna the whole story?
“Claire,” she said, drawing my attention and ensnaring my likely terrified gaze with her compassionate one. “This is a judgment-free zone. I think you’re fabulous, even after everything you told me while drunk. I just want to know you better. Maybe talking about it will help.”
“Did you tell Jethro? What I told you?”
“No, not a word. I told him that you and I talked about some deeply personal topics, but I wasn’t at liberty to share. He seemed relieved that you were finally talking to someone. Claire, Jethro cares about you. Let us help. Okay?”
I nodded, my worry easing the longer I gazed into her kind eyes, and decided to commit. I would tell her. I will tell her everything.
“Okay, so—um—I guess we’ll start with the night of my engagement party—that was May 2007.” Starting there made the most sense. Then I could ignore all the drama surrounding Billy impregnating his high school girlfriend before I left, which was more or less why we hadn’t been in contact after I ran away at fourteen.
Besides, that was Billy’s business—how Samantha Cooper had told him the night before I’d left town, how he’d decided to marry her and cut off all communication with me, and how she’d lost the baby before the truth of it was widely known—none of which was my secret to share.
“May 2007, got it.” Sienna nodded once. “What happened?”
“After the party was over, Ben took me to the jam session at the community center. The jam session hadn’t been a thing when I was growing up, it was new, and Ben wanted me to see it.” I swallowed, surprised at how easy this was to talk about; now that I’d started, I couldn’t seem to stop myself. “We arrived at the community center, Ben greeted old friends, introducing me as his fiancée. Most folks just thought I was some girl, not the runaway Scarlet St. Claire. They didn’t even remember her.”
“How odd.”
“Ben was talking to his old football friends and I was standing there, not having anything to contribute, and then I heard Billy’s voice.”
“You heard his voice? What? Talking to someone?”
“Singing.”
“Singing? I didn’t know he could sing.”
“Didn’t you?” My eyes moved over Sienna. I couldn’t see her well. Lit only by a single lamp in the corner, the nursery was dim, decorated in soft greens and quiet blues, giving it an aura of coziness and intimacy. “He can sing, and he has the most amazing voice. I would’ve recognized it anywhere.”
He’d been on my mind that night even before I heard his voice. Well, he’d always been on my mind, but it had been more than usual. Thoughts of him were front and center. It was at the engagement party I’d discovered Samantha Cooper and Billy Winston had never married.
“I excused myself from Ben and his friends and walked to the bluegrass room—that’s where Billy’s voice was coming from—and stood at the door, watching him sing.”
“Huh. That was the first time you saw him? Since leaving Green Valley at fourteen?”
I nodded, seeing Billy’s face as clearly now as it was then, his bright eyes on his brother Cletus who’d been playing the banjo next to him. Billy’s tenor had been rich, deep, and strong, and it seemed to reach the buried parts of me, grabbing on with hooks.
And he’d looked so different yet so much the same, older, his features more mature, and so incredibly handsome—brutally handsome—his beard no longer fuzzy and patchy, but dark and thick and neatly shaped.
“He’d found someone to trim his beard,” I said unthinkingly.
“What’s that?” Sienna leaned toward me, breaking the spell cast by the memory. “His beard what?”
“Oh, nothing.” I felt oddly at ease. Maybe it was the sleeping baby, maybe it was the lighting and the quiet, maybe it was the stillness of midnight, but for some reason I felt completely relaxed. “Anyway, that was the first time I saw him since leaving town three—or four, I guess three and a half—years prior.”
“And he saw you?”
“He did.” My stomach gave a gentle flutter. “He saw me.”
“And?”
“Well, they’d just finished a set, and people were clapping, and so he looked up and our eyes met and he . . .” That night my words had caught in my throat, my stomach and heart had pitched a riot. But now, remembering, it was like the events had happened to someone else.
“What? What did he do?” Sienna seemed to be sitting on the edge of her seat. “Tell me.”
I exhaled a chuckle. “Short story, he chased me out of the room, pulled me backstage behind the cafeteria curtain, and kissed the hell outta me.”
“Holy shit!”
“Yeah, well, that’s what I thought. I was so stunned.”
“Then what happened?”
“Uh, again, short story, we talked just a little, I immediately told him I was there with Ben, but I lied and said Ben and I were engaged, just like we’d told everyone else. Billy wasn’t very happy and he kinda stormed off. I tried to see him a few times after, so we could talk. We’d been, uh, very close before I ran away, but he refused to see me.”
“You didn’t see him at all?”
“No, I saw him.” A subtle warmth ignited behind my sternum, that persistent ache. I rubbed the spot. “We’d run into each other at various events, one time at the store when I was out with Mrs. McClure, one time at Daisy’s Nut House when I was there with Ben, but he never talked to me.”
“Silent treatment, eh?”
I chuckled again, but knew it sounded sad. “I just—I just wanted him to talk to me, you know? I missed him—so much, for so long—and I wanted to talk to him, but he wouldn’t even look at me.”
“He’s an asshole. We hates him, nasty hobitses.”
“No.” I laughed at Sienna’s Gollum impression, relieved to have something to laugh about. “He was hurt on account of me being engaged to someone else. I understood why he was upset.”
“But if he’d just talked to you, then maybe—” Sienna huffed unhappily. “He’s so stubborn. I see it with Jethro and him all the time, drives me crazy. I’ve never seen anyone hold a grudge like Billy Winston.”
I sent her a small smile. “Their story is a messy one. Billy—”
“Oh, I know. Jethro messed up, God how I know it. But people change, right? They try and work and struggle to make amends.”
“And Jethro has,” I assured her. “He’s a different person now, but you know what? He’s also the same. Jethro was always sweet, even when he was making bad choices.”
Sienna grinned, wagging her eyebrows. “Don’t spoil my fantasy of my husband. Just between the two of us, a part of me loves that he’s a reformed bad boy.”
“And so he is.”
Baby Liam made a little sound, stretching on Sienna’s shoulder. She glanced at him, shifting him to her other side, rocking and patting his bottom.
Once he was settled again, she whispered, “Okay, so, what happened? When did he finally talk to you?”
“Uh, in late September I think, over a year later. We were at the jam session at the same time again and we sang together, in front of folks, Cletus on banjo.”
“Cletus and his magic banjo.” Sienna’s lips twisted to the side thoughtfully.
“About a week after that is when Billy showed up on campus, surprised me outside the music building. He asked me to come with him to grab a coffee.” I frowned at the memory, at my faulty, naïve thought
process. “I was so excited, I would’ve gone anywhere with him. But instead of taking me to coffee, he took me to a hotel.” What a silly fool I’d been.
“Wait.” She stopped rocking. “I thought you said you guys didn’t have sex?”
“We didn’t. We went to the room and talked, and then he held me, and then he drove me home.”
Sienna’s eyebrows lifted up at the same rate her jaw dropped. “Seriously?”
I nodded again, my lips curved in a smile. “Yes. I’m serious. That’s it. He told me he missed me and he just wanted to know me again, that he’d tried to stay away but couldn’t. We agreed to meet at the same hotel, every week.”
Her pretty brown eyes were wide as quarters. “Whoa.”
“I know. I’d been constantly thinking about being with Billy, I’d fantasized about it, all the time. And then like magic, there he was.”
“This was while you were married-slash-engaged to Ben?”
“Yes,” I said, feeling the cold shadow of shame creeping into the oasis of the quiet nursery. Mentally, I shoved it away, pushing it back. I was so tired of feeling ashamed.
“And you loved him.”
“Yes. I did,” I said, feeling calm, which was so unusual for these memories. “When we were teenagers, before I left, I was in love with him then, as much as a fourteen-year-old kid can be in love with anyone. I missed him after I left—so much—I never stopped thinking about him.”
“Even when you and Ben were married-slash-engaged? Before you came back to Green Valley, you were still thinking about Billy?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Wait, can I ask this? What stopped you two from going all the way? Having sex, I mean. If you thought about him all the time, fantasized about being with him, didn’t you already cheat? Why not take the final step?”
“Honestly? It was me. I wanted to be with him, but I wasn’t ready. My experience with sex was . . . well, let’s just say, it wasn’t great.”