Steadfast (True North #2)

by Sarina Bowen

  Daddy’s face reddened. “I told you never to do that—”

  “You told me never to do a lot of things! But I wanted to know what Gavin was doing in his car that night. And nobody will ever talk about what happened!”

  His face was the color of raw meat. “Keep your nose out of it! You never fucking listen!”

  Somehow I kept my voice level. “You haven’t ever listened to me. We’re even.”

  “There is no EVEN!” he screamed. “You live in my house, you do as I say!”

  I knew he wasn’t going to like what I said next, but I couldn’t stop myself. “I don’t live here for the free rent. I’m here for Mom. She’s a wreck, and you don’t seem to care.”

  My father pushed back from the table with violence in his eyes, and I tensed all of my muscles. He picked up the gravy boat and hurled it against the wall, where it shattered into pieces, splashing gravy everywhere.

  Holy. Crap.

  I leapt up on shaky knees and high-tailed it out of the dining room, walking blindly toward the kitchen. I had no destination in mind other than away. My purse and car keys were upstairs, damn it. But my coat and shoes were beside the kitchen door. With shaking hands I put them on.

  From the dining room I heard the sound of a chair being kicked into the wall.

  Shit.

  I opened the kitchen door and stepped outside to find rain. My heart sank again. Even a walk around the block would be a trial. Awesome. But I did it anyway, exiting our garage and taking off down the wet sidewalk. It was breezy, too. I hugged my coat around me to keep the wind from whipping it around and tried to think where to go. On Thanksgiving everything was closed. I could try to fetch my car keys without crossing my father, and then drive… where? Some truck stop with sludgy coffee?

  The rain on my face was really the least of my problems.

  As I proceeded through Colebury, there were few signs of life. The houses were lit up, but traffic was nil. Until I hit Main Street, where an unfamiliar car slowed to a stop beside me. The window lowered. “Hey. You okay?”

  Jesus H. It was Jude. It was as if I’d summoned him like a genie by invoking him to my father. “I’m fine,” I grumbled. I kept walking.

  He inched along beside me. “Get in the car, Sophie.”

  I stopped walking and approached the car. “Why?”

  “What do you mean, why? Because it’s pouring.”

  “Where are you going to take me?” It’s not like I had a destination in mind.

  Clear eyes blinked up at me. “That’s really up to you.”

  I stepped closer, still unsure what to do. On the passenger’s seat sat a white bag. “What’s that?”

  His expression turned weary. “I can only guess where your mind goes when you’re asking me that.” He picked up the bag so I could see that it was from the grocery store. “A chocolate pumpkin cake. Can’t you smell it?”

  I could, actually. I put my hand on the door lever, but I was still feeling weird about this. “You’re the very last thing I need today.”

  He didn’t even look offended. Not one iota. “That is true about ninety-nine percent of the time. But it’s Thursday, so it’s not true right now.”

  I opened the door. “What? You’re, like, a better man on Thursdays?

  “That’s right.” He placed the cake on the backseat. As he twisted his body to set it down, I got a glimpse of his sixpack beneath the hemline of his T-shirt. There was a flash of golden skin, and a peek at the trim strip of light brown hair descending into his jeans.

  This was probably why I slid onto the passenger’s seat. My ex-con ex-boyfriend—a drug addict and convicted man-slaughterer—flashed me his happy trail and I got into his car.

  One wondered why my father didn’t trust me.

  “Where to?” Jude asked, pulling away from the curb. “You’re welcome to come to dinner with me, but I won’t get back until late, probably.”

  Once more I went over my options. And… wow. That was a depressing three-second calculation. I didn’t have any of the kind of friends that you could just drop in on at Thanksgiving. There was Denny, who would always take my call. But he’d want to know my troubles, and I didn’t feel like talking about it. I had terrific friends from college, but they’d all moved away after graduation six months ago.

  “You can come with me,” Jude said quietly.

  “Where?” I asked, still using a crisp tone. I hadn’t sounded like such a brat since my teenage days. But my attitude was my only weapon against the sea of memories that choked me every time I looked at Jude.

  “Some friends’ house. But it’s in the boonies, off exit three.”

  “Nice friends?” I asked. And that wasn’t belligerence, it was just self-preservation. Jude had been a drug addict when we were together. There was a lot that I’d chosen not to see. I’d never make that mistake again.

  Beside me, he sighed. “I wouldn’t take you anywhere that wasn’t nice.”

  “Okay,” I whispered as the rain beat down on the windshield. “Thank you,” I added a little too late.

  He drove through the rain, and for a while neither of us said anything. With the windshield wipers working furiously, he took us onto the highway heading south, driving slower than I’d ever seen him drive. I would have made a joke about it, except it wouldn’t have been funny. The last time he’d had a member of my family in my car, there’d been a funeral three days later.

  Eventually the rain slackened, becoming only a mist. He relaxed back in his seat, one muscular arm braced forward on the wheel. I sat in the passenger seat, trapped in a time warp. Watching Jude drive was something I’d done too many times to count. Once I’d given him road head on this very stretch of highway. We’d been heading to an outdoor concert in Norwich. It had been a warm summer night, and I’d been feeling every kind of frisky. So I’d bent over and unzipped his jeans.

  When I’d gone down on him, he’d pulled off at the next exit, parking the car behind a shuttered gas station. He didn’t let me finish him. Instead, we ended up fucking in the passenger seat.

  God. Now my face was flaming just remembering it. How on earth did people move on? The times I’d had with Jude were just too hot to fade from my memory. When I was a hundred and five, I’d still be able to recall losing my virginity to him. I could be blind and deaf and shriveled up like a raisin, and get wet and horny just remembering the way he whispered in my ear after sliding into me for the first time. “Now you’re really mine.”

  I should never have gotten in this car.

  “You always take walks in the pouring rain?” he asked suddenly.

  “No.”

  “Just… felt the urge?”

  I sighed. “No, Jude. I just didn’t want to be at home tonight. So I left.”

  To his credit, he didn’t ask again. But I’d squashed the conversation, and now he was probably regretting ever picking me up. “How are you doing, anyway?” I managed to ask.

  He gave the steering wheel a funny smile. “It’s Thursday night.”

  “You mentioned that.”

  “So I’m doing really well.”

  “You’re not making a whole lot of sense.”

  He rolled his shoulders. “Well, you know that cliché that says to take life one day at a time? I can’t even do that. It’s more like a one-minute-at-a-time kind of thing. So I don’t have the luxury of making a lot of sense. Sorry.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said nothing.

  After a while, he turned on the old car’s radio, and we listened to a story on Vermont Public Radio about a Windsor County farmer who’d just won an award for her sheep’s milk cheese.

  It ended and the weather report came on, so I shut the radio off. “Never once have I heard you listen to public radio.”

  “Well, it’s pretty useful in prison,” he said. “Radios are allowed but not computers. It was the only way to keep up with the outside world. And also it reminded me that I was still in Vermont. Otherwise, that place wa
s like being on the moon.”

  That shut me up fast. I’d never doubted that Jude deserved punishment for what he did. But three years in prison wasn’t something that I ever wanted to experience. Public radio seemed like a pretty healthy coping mechanism.

  “What was it like?” I whispered, before I could think better of it.

  “Gross,” he said right away. “Everything was dirty all the time. The toilet. The beds. The people. Nobody there had any hope.”

  “Except for you?” I asked, making myself sound even more naive than I’d already proven to be.

  “Not even me,” he said firmly. “Especially not me.”

  He left the highway in Randolph and then began to steer the car up a hill. “My friends have a dairy farm and an orchard. You might know them from church. The Shipleys?”

  “Sure I know the Shipleys. I went to Sunday school with May and Griffin. But how do you know them?”

  “I worked here until about three weeks ago. Lived in the bunkhouse.”

  “Oh.” So that’s where Jude had gone after he was released from prison. He’d been in Vermont all this time? How odd to think that I’d seen Mrs. Shipley at church on Sundays, usually with one of her daughters. “Mr. Shipley died a couple of years ago. Right around the time…” I didn’t finish the sentence. Right around the time Gavin died.

  “Yeah,” Jude said. “I never met him. Must have been a good guy, though. All the rest of ’em are.”

  “He was. Who runs the dairy farm now?”

  “Griffin. He’s expanding, actually. More cider, less dairy. His cider just won some kind of award.”

  “Wow. Griffin’s only… twenty six?”

  “Something like that.”

  I wanted to ask more. I was dying to know how Jude had gotten that job in the first place. But now the car was bumping along a dirt road, and we were turning onto a long driveway. Ahead of us I could see a big old farmhouse with lights burning in every window.

  Jude pulled up behind a beat-up old truck and killed his engine. Then he reached into the back seat for the pumpkin cake (flashing his abs again!) and got out of the car.

  I climbed out too, feeling a bit like Alice when she’s gone down the rabbit hole. The Jude I knew didn’t bring cake to somebody’s family supper. He didn’t do farm work, either. Wordlessly, I followed him up a couple of steps and into the Shipleys’ kitchen door. There were an improbable number of people in the steamy kitchen, and several of them greeted him the moment he entered.

  “Jude’s here!” one of the Shipley sisters called. It was the teenaged one—Daphne. “Oh, hey. Sophie, right?” There was curiosity in her eyes.

  “Right,” I said, feeling like an intruder.

  “Hey, what’s in the box?” her brother Dylan asked. He darted across the room and took the cake from Jude’s hands. “Sure smells good!”

  “It’s…” he got out. But then something small crashed into his knees, and he looked down.

  “Ow!” came from the floor.

  Jude bent over and picked up what turned out to be a toddler. “Easy, Maeve,” he said, holding the little person up to his face. “You okay? Do you remember me?”

  “Yood,” the little girl said affirmatively.

  “Close enough,” he smiled then, and I could only stare. I hadn’t seen a full-wattage Jude smile in what felt like forever. And I’d never seen him hold a child. She looked small against his broad chest. The sight of her there made my own chest shimmy.

  There had been a time when I thought that someday I’d have Jude’s babies. I’d never described this fantasy to him, because we were so young it was laughable. And even in my wildest daydream, I wasn’t bearing this hypothetical child until my career on Broadway was well established.

  But I’d wanted to. I’d wanted to be the girl who tamed the wild boy. I pictured his tattooed arm rubbing my pregnant belly, and then holding my child against his bare chest.

  My adolescent heart had some pretty crazy flights of fancy.

  “Where’s your mama?” he asked the tiny human politely. She pointed one stubby finger in the direction of what could only be the dining room.

  Jude beckoned to me and I followed him. We almost made it across the busy kitchen when Mrs. Shipley caught up to us.

  “Jude!” She ducked in to kiss him on the cheek. “Happy Thanksgiving. And Sophie Haines! It’s good to see both of you.” She patted me on the arm.

  “Ruth,” Jude said. “Sophie was at loose ends tonight, so…”

  Ruth held up a hand. “Don’t you start apologizing, sir. We’ve had this conversation before.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She gave my elbow a friendly squeeze. “Lovely to see you, honey. We have the year’s new cider in the dining room. Griffin will pour you a glass, and dinner’s almost ready.”

  “Is there anything I can do?” I asked. I felt pretty sheepish, walking into their kitchen on Thanksgiving.

  “We’ve got it down to a science,” she said, waving a hand at her daughters. “Have a drink, or if that’s not your style, there are sodas on the porch keeping cold.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “It’s honestly better if we get out of the way,” Jude said, reaching back to catch my hand in his. The sensation of his fingers closing over mine made me feel even more muddled than I already was.

  Jude led me through a doorway and into a spacious dining room. Even before I stepped over the threshold I was surprised by the number of voices rising up in conversation. This was quite the party, and that was a good thing—it made me less of an interloper.

  The moment Jude went through the door, more voices called his name. I followed just in time to see May Shipley hug-tackle him. “You’re even on time…” Her gaze slid to me. And then her eyes widened.

  The room grew quieter, and I felt eyes on me. Jude put an arm around my shoulder. “I think you know Sophie from church?”

  May blinked, and then seemed to recover from her surprise. “Of course. Good to see you, Sophie. It’s been a while since we had to wear those angel wings and a halo in the Christmas pageant.”

  “I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t let me near the angel’s wings anymore,” I said. “And forget the halo.”

  More than a few people laughed. “Let’s find her a chair,” May suggested.

  Jude handed the toddler off to a young couple, and I was introduced in quick succession to the parts of the Shipley family that I didn’t know by name. Griffin Shipley introduced me to his girlfriend, Audrey, two cousins, an aunt and an uncle and an elderly grandfather. There was also a hunky blond farmhand named Zach and two more neighbors.

  “Got that?” Jude joked after the introductions were made.

  “No,” I said, and everyone laughed.

  “Let me get her a glass of cider,” Griffin said. “Actually, grab two glasses, Audrey. I want her to taste the Dooryard and our prizewinner.”

  “Yes, captain!” his girlfriend quipped, opening a cabinet full of stemware.

  “You know they win awards for these?” Jude asked. “The price of all that success is that he has to talk like a French wine snob. You should hear how they go on about the terroire and the fruity overtones and the mushroomy lowlights.”

  “Mushroomy lowlights?” I laughed.

  Griffin snorted. “That sounds like something in the laundry hamper after we muck out the dairy barn.”

  Jude smiled at me as I took the first glass from Griffin. To say that this evening had become much more interesting than I’d expected was a massive understatement. I tasted the cider. Truly, it was wonderful—just the right balance of sweet and tart. “Wow,” I blurted. “This is great.”

  “Tell him the flavor is ‘round.’ That’s snobspeak for ‘good.’ He pops a boner if you say it’s ‘round.’”

  “Stop.” I gave Jude a slight elbow jab. “It’s really good. No mushroomy lowlights. Here.” I offered Jude the glass.

  Jude gave his chin a tiny shake. “No thanks. Not my thing.”<
br />
  “Really? It’s awesome.” I held the glass out still, because it was unlike him to refuse to try something.

  Jude didn’t say anything, but Griffin’s wince made me realize the stupid mistake that I’d just made. Jude didn’t taste the award-winning cider because it was alcoholic. “Shit, I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  “No big deal,” he said, and he meant it. His eyes were amused. “You and Griff can drink my share. I’m just gonna say hello to Zach for a minute, and find myself a soda.” He slipped away.

  Griffin and Audrey explained what made the two ciders different, and I tried to listen. But I couldn’t stop tracking Jude as he moved around the room greeting people. He looked comfortable and happy. My heart splintered every time he smiled.

  Jude found us seats side by side. Two full-sized dining tables had been lined up, end-to-end, and I counted sixteen people around the table. Yellow candlelight flickered on faces and brought out the sun-bleached highlights in Jude’s hair.

  “Let’s say grace,” Mrs. Shipley said. “Dad? Will you do the honors?”

  Everyone at the table began to clasp hands. I took the tiny hand of the toddler beside me with my left hand. And then Jude’s palm slid onto my right. I closed my eyes against the feel of it. His big hand was roughened from work, as it had always been. The familiarity is what really killed me. It was hard to be here with this oddly sanitized version of Jude. The wearer of flannel. Diet Coke in his glass. This was a Jude from an alternate universe. But I knew if I slid into his arms he’d feel so achingly familiar—broad and warm and strong and so very mine.

  “Amen,” mumbled Grandpa Shipley.

  Jude dropped my hand again.

  Chapter Nine

  Jude

  Cravings Meter: 2

  Thanksgiving at the Shipley’s was a lot like the other Thursday Dinners, only with fancier side dishes and more guests. And Grandpa Shipley wore a bow tie.

  But it was special to me, because I’d never been to a traditional Thanksgiving dinner before. Not since grade school, anyway. When I was a kid, my dad and I got take-out and watched football on TV. He’d buy himself a bottle of whatever and end the night passed out in his chair. Happy holidays.