by Jones, Gwen
Richard sucked in a breath. “Your wife!” He whirled around and I stood up, gathering the blanket around me. “You’re already married? Then is he the—”
“Richard don’t!” I cried. “I haven’t—”
“Richard . . .?” Andy growled, as lethally as I’d ever heard him. He looked tired but magnificent, in a business suit and overcoat, his tie loosened yet very much the corporate intimidator. “So you’re Richard,” he said, smiling most malevolently.
“Yeah,” he said, thrusting his chin. “What the fuck is it to you?”
Andy’s eyes narrowed. “Less than you think, but just to keep things peaceful, you’d better leave.”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “We’re talking business here.”
“Talk it later,” Andy said. “I need to speak with my wife.”
Richard laughed. “Oh yeah? Well, you had plenty of chances to speak to her in the last few months, but I haven’t seen you around, have I? Seems to me you’ve lost your place in line, buddy.”
“Richard,” I said. “Don’t do this. Just go.”
He whirled around to me. “Hey! I’m not done with you yet! Just sit there and be quiet!”
I looked past him to Andy, that little muscle in his cheek thumping wildly. “Oh, Je vais te casser la geule. Come on, putain.” He tapped Richard’s shoulder. “Time to go.”
Richard spun around, shoving Andy back against the railing. “And I said beat it cheese eater! Get the fuck out of my face!”
Andy’s eyes flared and in a flash he was on him, grasping Richard under the chin until he was red and sputtering. “And yet, that’s exactly where am, aren’t I, espèce de salaud? Now, fly away like the little chicken you are before I wring your fucking neck.”
He flung him loose and Richard stumbled back, clutching his throat and gasping. “Yeah okay, hard case—big fucking man! See how big you are when you hear from my lawyers! We’ll see who’s fucking big then!”
Andy threw up his hands. “What is it with these guys? Always the lawyers! Come on, femmelette,” he taunted Richard. “You want to take me on? You want to finish this?” He slid his coat off. “Come on and finish it like a man you little shit—I’m ready.”
Richard blanched, lunging for the door. “Go fuck yourself,” he squeaked, bolting through it like a jackrabbit, Bucky snarling and hot on his heels.
“Ha!” Andy laughed. “Look at that! Shit stains right through to the front door!”
I nearly choked. “I-I guess he’s skipping the colonic today!” We laughed until we were nearly breathless, then it was just me and Andy and the great divide that gaped between us. His gaze, vividly liquid, settled on me.
“Julie . . .” he said.
I straightened my back against the arm of the loveseat, the blanket still firmly around me. “What brings you here, Andy? It’s certainly a surprise.”
“Why should it be?” he said. “After all, you called me.”
“I did?” I remembered dialing him from the studio, but . . . “You got that? But it only rang once and I hung up.”
“It was enough.”
“But how did you know I’d be here?”
“I took a chance,” he said. “I saw the number and traced it back to your television station. Call me presumptuous, but I hopped the next plane. You see, I just happened to be in Paris, so I caught a direct flight to Philadelphia, as luck would have it.”
“Yes . . .” I said idly. “As luck would.”
His hand slid to the seat, his fingers just an inch or two from mine. “I had this vague notion you needed me. At least I hoped.”
A million thoughts swirled around my head, my heart pounding so heavily it was hard to think. As cold as it was on that porch I could still feel the heat from his body, or it could’ve been the sun, now up and blinding me as it rose over the water.
“Andy . . .” I said, not capable of much else. “I did try to call you, but . . .”
He looked toward the beach. “Everything I did while we were apart went toward working my way back to you. I also hoped it would give you time to think about forgiving me, and when you tried calling, I thought maybe you had. But I wasn’t about to guess, sitting on the other side of the Atlantic. I knew I had to come here and find out for myself.”
“Did you also find out your mother summoned me?”
Shock spread over his face. “What?”
“Yesterday afternoon, but only with the purest of intentions. He wanted to warn me of your imminent desire to divorce me.”
His fists clenched and he stood up, falling back against the railing. “Ma mère wouldn’t know a good intention if it bit her on the derrière. He reached into his coat, pulling out a cell phone. “I’ll straighten this out right now—”
“Ah! Look at that! So you do believe in them after all.”
He reddened slightly. “In this context, yes.” He showed me the face of the phone. “Look—four bars.”
“Put it away,” I said. “We fought our own battle, and I think I won.” My God, it was good to see him. “I don’t believe you’re half as callous as she thinks you are.”
His mouth crooked. “Only half?”
I pulled the blanket tighter around me and looked at him in all seriousness. “I think you know what she would’ve said, Andy. Is there anything you’d like to clarify?”
He seemed relieved I asked. “God yes.” He looked to the loveseat. “May I?” I nodded and he sat, though keeping a respectable distance between us. “I think I know what she’s referring to, and if I’m right, it’s only because she made it impossible for me.”
He shifted, stretching his long legs out on the porch. “When my mother refused to go back to America that summer when I was thirteen, what she didn’t know was my father had already set a private investigator after her.”
“Those photos I found were from him.”
“Yes. And two days later, my father was in Le Havre.” He shook his head. “God, how they fought that night. The neighbors thought they’d kill each other, but no one dared come in, not even the police. I’d been at a friend’s house, but when I came in my father went mad, pouncing on me.”
He leaned forward on his knees, his hands in his hair. “’Who do you love, Andy?’ he asked me. ‘Who means more to you—your mother or me?’ He warned me to choose right because if I didn’t . . .” He swallowed hard. “He pulled a knife from his boot—he said only one of them was getting out of there alive.”
Andy turned to me, the muscle in his cheek thumping violently. “How could I choose? I was thirteen years old! How many times did I have to come between them? Which one did I have to love more?” He looked out to the ocean, his face calming. “So I didn’t, and that’s when my father said I was dead to him. And as far as my mother was concerned? By the end of the month I was in Swiss boarding school and that . . .” He sat back. “Was the end of that.”
I reached for his hand. “Oh Andy. How our parents do fuck us up.”
He squeezed it. “But not now. Not anymore.”
I looked at him. “So tell me. What’s changed?”
“Many things,” he said, “but mostly this.” He turned to me, placing my hand over his heart. “I love you. I have for a long time, but now I’m finally able to say it. Je t’aime.”
As he brought my hand to his lips a tiny sound escaped me, neither good nor bad but more like astonishment.
“I know I’ve put you through a lot,” he said, “and I can’t blame you if you don’t trust me. And I don’t think you’re just going to jump in my arms and expect everything to go back as it was. But I want you to know I’ll keep trying until it either is or you tell me it’s over. But until that happens, I intend to make good on my promises to you so you aren’t beholden to bastards like that,” indicating Richard, I’m sure, “ever again.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out an envelope. “This is for you.”
“What is it?” I said, reluctant to take it.
“Go ahead.” He pressed it into my ha
nds. “Take a look.”
I opened it to a fold of papers and another envelope. The first was the deed to the cottage in my name, the second, a check for $100,000.
“Andy!” I said with a gasp, “you must be joking.”
“Oh, right,” he said with all seriousness, “it’s not enough, is it? Well, consider it a down payment anyway. I’ll be sending you more. I’ll send you anything you want. Just tell me what you think it should be.”
I put everything in the envelope and handed it back. “Andy, you don’t owe me a thing.”
“Oh yes I do,” he said adamantly. “I probably owe you much more. I’ve been a bastard, and I want to make it up to you.”
First off, I was having a hard time with the fact both Richard and Andy shared the same disparaging opinion of themselves. Second off, I knew only one of them actually believed it. Third off, could there really be men out there capable of such selflessness, without expecting anything in return? I mean, really, weren’t we all out for something? I knew I was. And a few minutes ago I actually I got it.
“Andy, I’m not perfect. And if I recall correctly, I think you had a bit of a problem with me, too.”
“What, with the birth control pills?” He waved me off. “Who needed them anyway? As I told you, they were probably overkill.”
I started to laugh. I mean hard. Until there were tears streaming down my face.
“What?” he said. “What’s so funny?”
“Andy,” I said, swiping my eyes, “that’s an understatement if I ever heard one.” I dropped the blanket from my shoulders and taking his hand, placed it over my belly.
He seemed confused at first, then suddenly his hand jolted away. “Christ,” he breathed, his eyes widening, “are you . . .?”
I took his hand again, placing it back on me. “Yes. And don’t be ridiculous—it’s most definitely yours. Conceived right here, I’m thinking.”
He pressed his hand against me, a warmth radiating from it, a smile slowly spreading across his face. “Wow,” he said, grinning. “I never thought I could do it.”
“I never thought I could do it either,” I said, “yet here we are.”
He took both my hands, kissing them. “But why didn’t you tell me sooner?” Then he waved his hand. “No, don’t bother—I know the answer to that. I’d love you whether this happened or not. But I have to tell you . . .” His grin broke wide. “I’m really happy it did.”
“So does this mean . . .?” I let him finish that.
He cupped my chin and kissed me, so deeply and so full of romance I shivered, right down to my swollen ankles. “Let’s go inside,” he said, helping me up.
But before we did I went to the railing, looking out to the ocean and the rumple of clouds laying low on the horizon. “You know, it wasn’t my attempted phone call that brought you to me,” I said.
Andy stood behind me, his hands falling atop my belly. “No? Then what?”
I looked across the water, imagining the wide ocean, the ships that sailed on it, the long lonely space that separated this island from the other side. “Andy, you don’t, by any chance, believe in telepathy?”
“I didn’t,” he said, kissing my neck, “but I do now.”
SIX MONTHS LATER . . .
One advantage to marrying a billionaire was you could buy any kind of car you wanted. Our considerable fortune bought me a used Jeep Patriot, fuel-efficient enough to get me back and forth from Philadelphia, big enough for Andy and the infant seat, and rugged enough to ride me up and down the sugar-sand trail to town. I was on my way back from one such excursion to the big city that morning, snagging a quick meeting with my editor, Mina Riley, as she made her way from D.C. to New York.
“So?” I said as we sat at the food court in 30th Street Station. “What did you think?”
Mina eyed me over the rim of her coffee. “Quite frankly, Julie, I have to tell you, I never thought I’d see the finished manuscript. I honestly figured I had gifted you with five grand.”
“For what it’s worth,” I said, chagrined, “I’m truly sorry about that.”
“Well, don’t be,” she said adamantly. “You’ve redeemed yourself. I just finished it on the train and Julie, I love it. But I do have to ask—what took you so long?”
I thought back to the day Andy and I met at the firehouse, our wedding and those crazy first weeks of our marriage, our long separation and finally getting back together, and then after, how the writing eluded me for so long. “You know how I kept a journal when we first got married?”
“Right.” She laughed. “Which you kept it under the dresser in the bathroom with your birth control pills.”
I nodded. “While we were separated I couldn’t bring myself to look at it, and then when we got back together and I finally started writing, I didn’t know how to end it. I’m still not sure I ended it right.”
Mina placed a well-manicured hand over mine. “Let me ask you. Are you happy?”
Oh man, I had to think about that because, truth be told, I was so many things these days. I was a wife, a mother, a TV journalist, and an author, but mostly I was just busy as hell, spending a good amount of time exhausted, muddy, bug-bitten, wet, shit-smeared (from various different species, human and otherwise), achy, itchy, rushed, on-deadline, milkified, entranced, awed and very much in love.
“You know, it’s crazy,” I said, “but I really haven’t had the time to consider it. But if doing what you love is what makes you happy, then I guess I am.”
“Well that’s good,” she said, patting my hand. “Because crazy love makes for great copy. So I want you to keep going with this.”
“Keep going!” Writing that book had been like giving birth, and she wanted me to keep going? “And write about what?”
“Life on the farm. Andy, the baby. The animals. That jar you found in the yard with the Indian-head pennies in it. The neighbor with the shotgun and the still. The tree frogs. All of it. Julie.” She eyed me squarely. “You think it’s those odd folks out there making your stories, but that’s not it at all. It’s the angle at which you see them that makes them so unique. Your knack for looking below the surface and saying ‘hmm . . . maybe things aren’t quite what they seem.’ That’s what makes you divine, Miss Julie, and that’s what I want to buy.”
“Really?” I said, basking a bit in the ego boost.
“Really.” They called her train. “Damn, I have to go.” She leaned in to press her cheek to mine. “Keep writing, and I mean it. See you soon.”
“Au revoir,” I had said, waving as she disappeared down the stairway.
The Jeep bumped into a rut and I winced, my full breasts bouncing. I had expressed them before I left, but already they were leaking into my bra. Probably because the baby drained me dry at every feeding, in full possession of all of Andy’s vigorous appetites. Supply and demand, my doctor had said at the size of my enormous boobs. If they were this big now, and the baby only six weeks old, I could expect a centerfold offer for Penthouse by the end of six months.
I steered the Jeep around another turn, passing the ruins of the old stagecoach stop. The Iron Bog Historical Society had been out the week before, and they were pretty sure they could get the people up in Trenton to give it historical status, which would make it eligible for restoration funding. But Andy had pretty mixed feelings about that. For one, he wouldn’t accept it; if he wanted it fixed he could certainly afford it on his own. Marcel had continued to prove he had a head for running the business; Andy’s quarterly share was almost an embarrassment of riches. But rather than restore a shine to the darker side of his family, he donated a sweet sum to the local school system, for repairs, technology, and Wi-Fi, bringing Iron Bog fully into the twenty-first century.
But he couldn’t fool me. There was another, more selfish reason why he demurred. Restoration to the old ruins would bring tourists a little too close to the insular paradise he’d carved out of these woods, populated by a cow, chickens, mud, and mushrooms, and a house on
a lake surrounded by Pines and clean air and a whole lot of nothing else. Except for me and the baby and oh yeah—Bucky, running full-bore up to me as I pulled into the yard.
The baby squealed from Andy’s arms as he walked out of the barn. “Hey, Luc, see? The lunchwagon’s arrived. Now we can both eat.”
“Sorry,” I said, taking the baby, “but Mina’s train was late. But the good news is Gil’s approved the new format. Now I only have to be in the city once a week. Denny and the assistants will take care of the rest.”
“Terrific,” he said, leaning in to kiss me, tweaking a nipple that instantly soaked my blouse.
“Andy!” I cried, laughing as I slapped his arm. “Isn’t it bad enough I’m ready to explode!” I shifted the baby to the other shoulder.
His mouth crooked. “Just testing the teat, ma belle. Got to get back into practice, you know. Betsy’ll be calving again by next month.”
“Oh man, it’ll be so nice being the milker instead of the milkee.” I went to the porch and, sitting down, lifted my blouse and unhooked my bra. Almost instantly Luc latched on, slurping happily as his little hands kneaded the air. I kissed his silky head, feeling the milk drain from me. Andy propped a foot on a step, watching us.
My boys, I thought.
There was a time in the not too distant past when I thought I knew too many men. Now I knew these two were all I needed. And maybe one more, if we were lucky enough. And a mademoiselle or two, to make it even.
“Mina wants me to write another book.”
“About what?” Andy said.
“About the farm, the animals. The people around here. The Pines.”
“About our life.”
“I suppose.”
Andy leaned forward, his gaze washing over us. “Tu es ma vie. Je t’aime.”
I smiled, understanding perfectly.
About the Author
* * *
Gwen Jones, after spending years writing several unpublishable novels, decided to learn what she was doing wrong or give it all up. So after earning an MFA in Creative Writing from Western Connecticut State University, she’s now so good they even allow her to teach there. An unabashed born-and-bred native of Southern New Jersey and the Jersey Shore, she lives with her husband, Frank, and the absolute cutest cat in the world, Gracie. To see more, visit her website at gwenjoneswrites.com.