Dust

by Eva Marie Everson

  “I take it your plan worked.”

  “It did.”

  “And he never suspected that Biff wasn’t his biological son?”

  Miss Justine pulled the drawer open to again reveal the hidden box of cigarettes. “He suspected,” she said, removing the box, retrieving a cigarette, and then lighting it. “But I never let on one way or the other.”

  “And Biff? When did he start to suspect?”

  “He didn’t need to suspect. He had enough of his father’s blood to know and he’s let me know it with those eyes of his since he was old enough to understand the way of things.”

  “But you love him. Surely you love him.”

  “My loving him has nothing to do with this. Stay away from him, Allison. He’ll use you and then discard you like he does all the conquests in his life and you’ll be left running toward a hotel room, lying to the manager, ordering up a bottle of champagne.”

  I sank into the seat. “No worries there, Miss Justine. You and I both know I’ll never have to convince Westley as to the paternity of a child.”

  She drew hard on the cigarette, held her breath, then exhaled. “I’m not talking about paternity, Allison. I’m talking about not believing your marriage is in trouble simply because Westley’s head—or maybe his health—is somewhere else right now.”

  “I’ve been thinking about this a lot today,” I said, deciding quickly what to say and what to leave out, such as, “Cindie’s pregnant again. Married.”

  Instead, I said, “It’s more than the medication he’s on—our not sleeping together. Westley is so caught up in what he’s doing at work—climbing the great financial ladder so he can buy more toys and go on more trips. And his weekends are consumed with Michelle. He thinks—never mind the heart attack—he still thinks life is one great big party and that it all works out if you just do the fun things. I think—no, I know—he’s forgotten about me. About who I really and truly am. To him I’m the woman who raises his child Monday through Friday. I’m the one who makes sure her homework is done and that she makes it to dance class twice a week and Girl Scouts and church. He could have hired someone to do what I do—”

  “Not true. He could never pay anyone enough to love that child the way you love her and the way she loves you.”

  That much was true.

  “Allison?” She ground out her cigarette, left the second butt next to the first, both rimmed with the red of her lipstick. “Do you love him?”

  “Westley?”

  “Of course, Westley. You’re not so foolish as to think you love my son.”

  “Yes.” The answer came without hesitation. “I love him very much. And you’re right about the other.”

  “Do you tell him?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then the passion will return.”

  Maybe … and maybe I would—could—forget about Biff. About the way he unnerved me. Seemed to read my thoughts and desires. The way he somehow knew me better than I knew myself. Yes, maybe …

  After all, the passion between Wes and me had been nearly astonishing once upon a time. Explosions and starbursts and trumpets and cymbals. Maybe it could be again. “Thank you, Miss Justine.”

  “Don’t let me down,” she said as I stood. “And do not come back to this house until Wednesday.”

  “Why Wednesday?”

  “Because I’m sending Biff home tomorrow. Whether he likes it or not. This is still my house and I can darn well determine who stays and who doesn’t.”

  I laughed at the notion. “All right.” The clock struck, the little bird sticking his head out once, twice, then a third and final time. “I need to go home,” I said, then retrieved my purse and started for the door.

  “Allison?”

  I turned.

  “We’ll never speak of this again.”

  I smiled to soften the moment, my eyes roving to the drawer in the little table and the crushed butts in the ashtray. “What cigarettes?”

  Miss Justine laughed so hard she fell into a coughing fit. “God love you, baby girl. God love you.”

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  March 1993

  Cindie

  One of the best things about being married to Kyle, in Cindie’s mind—besides the fact that he treated her and their son like a queen and a prince, respectively—was Friday nights. Every Friday, after a long week of work, she drove through the torment of Atlanta’s typical bumper to bumper traffic to their Tucker home—the same one she’d shared with Kyle when they’d been roommates, the one he had eventually purchased—to find her husband and son waiting. Waiting and ready for pizza.

  “To commemorate the night we really got to know each other,” Kyle had told her when he began the tradition shortly after their marriage.

  Although, in her mind, the evening she’d come home from being with Patterson only to find Kyle stretched out on the sofa—the evening they’d shared their first pizza and their first decent conversation—was not the night they’d really gotten to know each other. Even five years later, the memory of Kyle walking into her apartment, slipping into her bed, and loving her as if she were the most beautiful woman in the world made her feel warm. Fuzzy.

  She loved him. She loved him. Kyle Lewis had given her something she’d never thought she’d have—security. Security within family. Within love. And laughter. Lots of laughter. Everything she thought had been meant for everyone but her. The only thing missing was Michelle, but Kyle had managed to convince her that to take Michelle away from Westley after she’d been with him so long wouldn’t have been best for her daughter, her baby who had turned seventeen last November. A junior in high school now. Beautiful and smart and talking about pre-med after graduation. Emory University, she thought. Which would put her in the Atlanta area. Perhaps Michelle would move in with them then. Wouldn’t that be a kick in the pants? They’d have all the time in the world. Every day. Every night. And she could talk to her daughter whenever she wanted.

  Not that she couldn’t now. They talked all the time. They emailed, a somewhat new thing Cindie didn’t 100 percent understand but enjoyed. They also spent as many of the holidays together as the courts allowed.

  Having their son—hers and Kyle’s—helped ease the pain a little—not that one child could ever replace another. The only thing that worried her, truly worried her, was how much Karson looked like Patterson. “Spitting image” as the old saying went. There were times when she wondered if Kyle would see it, too. But then she reminded herself that her husband had only taken one class with Professor Thacker. He hadn’t seen the man as often—or in the same way—as she had. He didn’t know the line of his face the way she did. The square of his jaw. The line of his brow. The way it rose when he laughed; the way it furrowed when he grew angry.

  Cindie sniffed hard as she crawled from one lane of 285 to the next, anticipating her exit. She bristled, bringing her index finger and thumb up to play with the oversized earrings pulling at her lobe. Even after six years, that one inkling of the night she told Patterson about her pregnancy unnerved her. He’d called her the next morning—thankfully while Kyle was in the shower. She answered, heard his voice, and immediately hung up. He called again. She picked up the handset, set it back in its cradle, then took the phone off the hook, grateful that the bedroom’s extension wasn’t cordless. When Kyle emerged from the bathroom wrapped in a cloud of steam and spied the handset on the bedside table, she convinced him she didn’t want their first real morning together to be interrupted by a phone call. Especially since they’d both decided to “call in sick.”

  But Patterson had been persistent. Persistent as she was stubborn. By the time he finally caught up to her, a week had passed. A week of being with Kyle every night. A week of learning, in seven short days, what real love felt like. No. Adoration was what it was. And it was nothing like she’d experienced in all the years she’d been with the professor or the one night with Westley.

  Patterson had called her name as she stepped out of t
he car, startling her. But she’d prepared herself. She’d rehearsed exactly what she would say and how she would deliver the words. “Stop right there,” she told him, then searched her workplace parking lot for any sign of his car. Finding it at the end of a long line of automobiles, she returned her attention to him.

  “Look,” he replied, his voice pleading. “I know I said some things—”

  “I said stop.”

  He jerked. She flinched. Then, righting herself, she took in a deep breath and, having exhaled fully, recited her lines. “Patterson, I want you to go back to your car, and then I want you to get in it and drive away. To the college. Or home. Wherever it is you need to be, it’s not here.” Other cars pulled in and circled in search of their assigned spots. Cindie knew them all. If necessary, she’d ask one of them to call the police.

  If necessary.

  “Cindie.”

  “No.” She raised her hand. He looked at it, then back to her face. Her eyes. “I do not want to have to keep going over this. I’m taking care of …” She looked down. Back up. “Of all this.”

  “Does that mean—”

  “It means I’m taking care of it. And then I’m taking care of me.” Her eyes found his again and held. She was ready now. Ready for the next rehearsed line, whether she felt it or not. “No more victimization, Patterson. I’m done playing that role.”

  “You?” he asked, nearly laughing. “A victim?”

  It was then she caught a whiff of his cologne, one she knew well. Eternity by Calvin Klein. The irony struck while simultaneously turning her stomach, sending a litany of questions upward. How had she gotten here? What roads, what paths had led her from days of carefree abandon, running freely in her mother and father’s home with her sisters and brother to the mess of living without her father? Of being solely raised by Lettie Mae? To that of a grown woman, pregnant for the second time by two different men, both who refused to marry her?

  Bile rose from the pit of her belly. Maybe it was the baby. Or maybe this was Patterson sickness. Or sick-and-tired-of-being-used sickness. Whatever it was, she knew then what she wished she’d known years before—that Patterson Thacker was no different, really, than her father. Or her mother. Or Westley. Another user was all he’d been, and she’d been gullible enough—or desperate enough or stupid enough—to allow it. While Kyle … in spite of the fact that she’d tricked him into her bed, Kyle truly wanted her. Loved her. Treated her with such attention and passion she could hardly believe that what was happening between them was happening between them. To her.

  She took a step back, pressed herself against her car, mostly to keep any semblance of fear at bay. “Patterson,” she said. “Go.”

  For whatever reason—whether he’d heard some command in her voice or whether he had grown weary of playing with the victim—he did. Not that it stopped him from calling her. At least three times a week, always at work. “Just checking up,” he’d say. Which meant he wanted to know if she’d aborted their child. But the calls stopped the day she told him that she’d gotten married and that he needed to leave her alone. “No one’s the wiser,” she said. “You can go on with your life as if I never entered it.”

  He didn’t speak at first. Maybe she’d shocked him, though she couldn’t imagine Patterson without retort. “I hope you’ll be very happy,” he finally muttered. And, with that, he disappeared from her life. Not once in the five years since had she heard from or seen him … except in the features of the child they’d made together.

  She drove now, free of the choking traffic, down the street she called home, an avenue lined with azaleas and dogwoods in full blossom of white and varying shades of pinks and reds and purples. She smiled broadly at the sight of her husband and son standing outside on the driveway, looking down to study something of such vital importance it required mutual concentration. Then, as if on cue, they turned toward her. Karson leapt in place until Kyle scooped him up and deposited him on his broad shoulders. Their son wrapped pudgy hands over his father’s high forehead and held on as they made their way onto the grass, sprouting green after the harsh recent winter. Cindie straightened to see what held their attention, then saw the chalked outline of a heart with her name scrawled in its center. She smiled as warmth slid over her. Gosh, how she loved them. Loved them both. Whatever sins she’d committed had been worth the torment of living with the fear of her deceit.

  As she stepped out of the car, Kyle returned to the driveway where he leaned forward to release Karson into her arms. She cuddled their son, kissing the warm folds of his neck, then raised her face for a welcome from her husband. He obliged willingly. “Traffic bad?” he asked.

  “What do you think?” she asked, nearly wrung out from it. “But I’m home now and ready for pizza.”

  “Pizza!” Karson exclaimed, throwing himself backward. Cindie nearly stumbled to keep from dropping him.

  Kyle moved closer, slipped his hands under Karson’s armpits, and drew him away from her before she fell. “I have a surprise for you,” he said. “There’s a new place that opened up a few weeks ago. A couple of the guys at work say it’s some of the best New York-style pizza they’ve ever had.” His eyes widened. Sparkled. “And one of the guys at work is actually from New York.”

  Cindie laughed. “Sounds good.” She pointed toward the house. “Just let me get out of these work clothes and into something less professional. I can be ready in fifteen minutes.”

  Patterson

  One of the best things about Friday nights was coming home from the university, traffic as horrid as it was, to the squeals of his young grandson when he opened the door. “Papa!” The four-year-old boy—usually in his grandmother’s arms—pushed against Mary Helen to be released. She’d set his feet to the floor and he’d run with every bit of energy given a toddler, straight to his grandfather’s extended arms.

  “Monty, my boy,” he’d tease as he tickled and nuzzled.

  “I’m not your boy,” the child—smarter than any four-year-old he’d ever met—would say. “I’m Mommy and Daddy’s boy. I’m your grandboy!”

  “You are indeed. Every inch my grandboy. And I love you … oh, let me see if I can remember … how much do I love you?”

  “Forever and ever amen,” came the answer Patterson had taught him.

  A boy. Finally, a boy. Of course, he knew about his biological son, the one with Cindie. She called him the day after she gave birth to inform him of the details. Eight pounds, two ounces. All toes and fingers accounted for. A wisp of blond curls crowning his head. Then she hung up, not waiting for his reply. Not wanting, he surmised, to hear his dismissal or acceptance of a child he’d always hoped to have—a son. Nor had she waited for him to give his own news—that within a few weeks of finding out about Cindie’s pregnancy, his oldest daughter Patricia had come home from college with her boyfriend of eight months—or had it been nine—and announced that, having been to a justice of the peace the day before, they were now Mr. and Mrs. Montague Travers Stallard. Mary Helen had burst into tears; she’d already been consumed with hopes of an extravagant wedding. One that would take place in the same downtown Atlanta church where they’d married. Mary Helen would fuss over their daughter in the same bride’s room where she had—slightly over two decades before—been fussed over herself.

  His wife’s plans for their oldest child were not to be thwarted, however. She quickly recovered and declared that they could still have a formal wedding. One that would take a few months to plan, but it would be lovely. “We may,” she said after a quick moment’s thought, her hands fluttering, “have to forego the teas and showers, but—then again—maybe not. Maybe a few—”

  “Mom,” Patricia said, interrupting her mother’s train of thought as she slipped her slender hand into her new husband’s. “Stop.” She looked, first to Monty, as everyone called him, then to her father and then, back to her mother. “We’re pregnant.”

  And just like that—once the shock had worn off, which took a good thirty seco
nds—Mary Helen went from planning bridal showers to baby showers while Patterson stood and, almost robotically, kissed his daughter’s cheek, then shook the hand of the young man who had gotten his little girl pregnant.

  The thought disturbed him, and he shook it loose to set it free, never to think of it again. A decent father didn’t muse over such things. But even in the flurry of the announcements and calling the other girls into the room to fill them in on the latest … even in the excitement of being told by Helen Leigh—their youngest—that he was an old man now … reality struck him. In a few months, he’d become both a father again and a grandfather. Not that anyone, other than himself, would know it. Not in this room, at least. But he would know it. And he would have to live with it.

  Yet, for all the punishment of living with the knowledge that he had a son, it wasn’t too long after that Patricia laid his first grandson in his arms, kissed his cheek, and called him, “Papa.” Nothing in this life could have prepared him for the rush of emotion that engulfed him. He had thought before that he’d known love. He loved Mary Helen. She was, after all, his wife. The mother of his children. And, since meeting Nola Edwards, she’d opened herself up to him in ways he could have never begun to expect. Something he still didn’t understand but refused to question. He merely accepted and delighted in it.

  He also loved his daughters. They could be self-centered—as daughters often were, especially in the teen years—but they were the heart and soul of him.

  So, yes, he knew love. But, this …

  In that first encounter he held little Monty in such a way that heart touched heart until his own skipped in its rhythm. Perhaps Monty’s had, too. Patterson believed they bonded at this exact second. As far as Patterson was concerned, there was no one in the world like this little person. Somewhere out there he had a son, yes. But this was his grandson who, wonder of wonders, looked like Patterson had spit him out of his own mouth, a fact proven even more so as the child grew. Life simply couldn’t get any better.