The Will

by Kristen Ashley

  These were bad tears, overwhelmed by the emotions of loss and betrayal.

  “Tears are hardly necessary, Josephine,” Henry said dismissively. “We were simply photographer and assistant.”

  “Outside of Gran, for twenty-three years, you were the only real thing I had.”

  The mask again slipped but he got it back in place swiftly.

  But he said nothing.

  I did.

  “I’ve hurt you and done that simply by realizing the possibility I might find happiness and reaching for it and you strike back like this?”

  “I’m uncertain what kind of happiness you can find with a small town strip club owner in the middle of nowhere in Maine but if that’s what you want, Josephine, you now have a clear shot.”

  He was giving me a clear shot.

  A clear shot by taking himself away.

  “My first living memory is my father slamming my mother’s head against the kitchen floor.”

  It came out as blunt and ugly as it was. And when it hit him, the mask disintegrated and Henry flinched so severely, his head jerked back with it.

  “Some time later, she left us, never to return. Some time after that, when he discovered I was dating a boy without his permission, he beat me so badly I was in the hospital for a week.”

  Another wince and, “Josephine—”

  “Gran saved me from that. I managed to become normal again. I went to college. Fell in love. He was controlling, this was true, but he was handsome and he cared about me. I thought. Until the first time he beat me. I fell down a flight of stairs and broke my shoulder. I came back to Gran after that too.”

  His hand came out but I took a step away.

  “Did you ever wonder why I was so remote, Henry?”

  “Honey—”

  “Did you ever think to ask?”

  “Jo—”

  “No. You didn’t. I was so in love with you when we first started working together, every day held pain. But it was put up with the pain or lose one of only two people in my life I cared about and respected. So I put up with the pain.”

  His face had blanched. “You were in love with me?”

  “Head over heels.”

  His voice was aching when he whispered, “Sweetheart—”

  “To find you were the same and you didn’t even ask why I was protecting myself. Why I was aloof. Why I was disconnected. Didn’t even attempt to find a way in. I never thought for one moment you returned those feelings because…because…I don’t know why you did it but you never, not once, gave me any indication that you felt that way for me. You gave many other women that indication, right in front of me, but never me.”

  “I showed you all the time, Josephine,” he said gently.

  “No.” I shook my head. “Jake did. He knew all that about me and he knew he had to proceed with caution but the point is he realized he liked me, he was attracted to me and he proceeded.”

  “I’m afraid he had an unfair advantage, honey, because I didn’t know any of this shit,” Henry pointed out.

  “You…didn’t”—I leaned in— “ask,” I hissed and I leaned back. “Two decades and you didn’t ask, Henry?”

  “How was I to know there was something to ask about, Josephine?”

  “If you love someone, you want to know everything. You want to heal all hurts. You want to be there for them when they need you. You just want to be with them all the time.”

  “Are you saying you’re in love with a man you’ve known two weeks?”

  “No, Henry. I’m saying that’s what I gave you for twenty-three years.”

  I watched him flinch again. He knew it was true. Every word of it.

  He recovered and inquired, “How do you press something like that with someone you employ? Someone that matters. Someone that, if you don’t get it right, you could lose and you know you can’t lose.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe you do it because it’s worth the risk of whatever might become of it.”

  “I’ll remind you, sweetheart, you felt the same way and you didn’t take that risk either,” he said softly.

  He was right.

  Absolutely right.

  “I was afraid,” I told him.

  “I understand that now. I could have no idea then.”

  He was right about that too.

  I looked to the dirt at my feet.

  “Josephine,” Henry called and my eyes went back to him.

  “It wasn’t meant to be,” I stated.

  “How can we know that if we haven’t tried?” he asked.

  “Because I’m falling in love with a man I’ve only known two weeks but even falling, I already know I can’t imagine what a day would be like without him. No,” I shook my head as Henry’s face started getting hard again. “I can imagine it. I just don’t want to.”

  “I’m not certain he’s right for you,” he told me.

  “And I’m not certain you would be, saying something like that when you don’t know him in the slightest.”

  “I know we had our words yesterday, Josephine, they were unpleasant, he was there throughout, and he didn’t intervene for you once,” he pointed out.

  “You’re right. He didn’t. But then again, you were my employer, had been for years, I’m a forty-five year old woman and it really wasn’t his place to intervene. However, when I was overcome by emotion after that scene that was when Jake intervened, holding me in his arms, stroking my hair and talking to me to soothe me.”

  “So this guy is perfect,” Henry stated disbelievingly and perhaps a little sarcastically.

  “Not at all,” I told him. “He’s ludicrously protective and preposterously overbearing. He’s also got this thing where he selects my seat for me, usually next to him, and does this by planting me in it. He can be very dictatorial and it isn’t infrequent when he is. He laughs when I’m being serious and bellows from wherever he is in the house at wherever the person he’s talking to is. He also uses curse words frequently, even in front of his children, and allows them to do the same, especially his eldest son, this latter I intend to have words with him about very soon. I’m certain he has other bad habits that I’ll discover, given the chance. The thing that makes me happy is that I have that chance.”

  “So it’s you giving up on us,” Henry noted.

  “No, it’s me saying that we had our time, that time passed. We both made that mistake. And now it’s me moving on. I didn’t drive here to fire me, Henry. You did.”

  “Knowing how I feel about you, can you work alongside me? And if you care about me, can you honestly wish to do that while making me watch you fall in love with another man?”

  “No, I intended to resign,” I told him honestly. “However, I had hoped to do it and salvage a relationship with someone I love very deeply who means a great deal to me. I just hadn’t come up with how to do that yet.”

  He said nothing but held my gaze.

  I did the same.

  Henry was the first one to break the silence.

  “Fuck, I should have come to Lydia’s funeral with you,” he clipped tersely.

  He should have.

  He really should have.

  But he didn’t.

  And if he did, I would not have Jake.

  Or Amber.

  Or Ethan.

  Or Conner.

  So I said nothing.

  “I fucked us up,” he whispered and the way he did made my anger fade but my pain increase.

  “We both did,” I said quietly.

  “You had no choice with your past the way it was. I did.”

  I couldn’t argue that.

  “I fucked us up,” he repeated and I moved to him and put my hand on his chest.

  “Stop it, Henry.”

  “Twenty-three years, I’d look forward to you walking into my hotel room every morning with a coffee, sweetheart. Daniel’s nowhere near as attractive as you and completely the wrong gender. He sends it up through room service.”

  I closed my eye
s and dropped my head to rest it on my hand on his chest.

  Oh, how I loved walking into Henry’s hotel room with a coffee every morning. The smile he’d give me. We’d sit down and chat, about the work to be done that day, where we were going, what was next, or nothing at all.

  And he’d always make me laugh.

  Now, looking back, knowing what I knew, I realized he worked for it, worked to give that to me.

  Every morning.

  His hand lifted and wrapped around the back of my neck and that felt nice and warm in the crisp autumn air. Strong. Sweet. Lovely.

  With his lips at my hair, he said, “You find your way to salvage our relationship, you tell me. Then we’ll do it.”

  I moved closer and wished the fence wasn’t between us as I turned my head so I could press my cheek to his chest.

  His hand gave my neck a squeeze and his lips were still at my hair when he said, “This is killing me, honey, so I must go.”

  I nodded, my cheek sliding against his shirt and I started to move back because I didn’t want to hurt Henry. Not ever.

  And I had.

  Unintentionally but I’d still done it.

  So I had to stop doing that.

  But I stopped when Henry’s hand at my neck put pressure on.

  I tipped my head back to see Henry’s descending.

  And then he kissed me. Not a chaste brush on the lips. His mouth opened over mine and for some reason, mine opened under his and his tongue slid inside.

  He tasted very nice. He kissed very well. I was not surprised at either. He was Henry and almost everything about him was good, but as for the latter, he’d had a lot of practice.

  But it didn’t fire me the way it should have. The way it could have. The way I knew it would have, even only three weeks ago.

  Because I’d had Jake that morning, his mouth, his hands, his body, and he gave so much even while taking, nothing could compare.

  Nothing.

  Not even Henry.

  He lifted his lips from mine and looked in my eyes.

  He saw it because I didn’t hide it.

  His voice was again an ache when he murmured, “Fuck, I fucked us up.”

  My throat closed and I could do nothing but step away.

  His hand dropped away when I did.

  My eyes again filled with tears when it did.

  How could it be that I felt with Jake like I was getting everything and at that moment knowing Henry was walking away, knowing Gran was gone, it felt like I’d lost everything?

  “I wish for you to be happy,” he said gently and I swallowed, the tears now stinging my eyes. “I truly do.”

  “I hope you’re happy too.”

  My throat started aching as Henry tipped his head to the side and said, “Good-bye, my Josephine.”

  “Good-bye, Henry,” I forced out.

  He smiled. It was sad. It was adrift.

  It gutted me.

  Then he walked away.

  * * * * *

  I sunk my feet into the tub filled with warm water and bubbles.

  The instant I did, Alyssa said, “Okay, honey, tell momma all about it.”

  My surprised eyes went to her.

  It was obviously after Henry left. After I gave up on the garden, went inside and saw I had a flurry of very verbose texts from Alyssa explaining how things would go with Ethan, Bryant and Sofie.

  It was after I dropped Ethan off, he raced away with Bryant, I met Sofie (learning that Sofie was the oldest, Bryant the youngest and there were three in between). It was further after I saw that Sofie was a younger, shier, quieter Alyssa and noted in the five minutes I was with her she was very sweet.

  And it was after Alyssa swept us out to her car. After she’d driven us into town and parked behind her shop. After she let us in, turned on lights and got the pedicure chair prepared. After I’d taken in her shop, which looked not one thing like a Maude’s House of Beauty, but instead like a rather posh spa you could find in New York, Los Angeles or even Paris. It was decorated in gold, silver and cream with modern lights hanging from the ceiling with a multitude of crystal lightshades that cast prisms that were very attractive.

  It was after all that I looked to her, saw her looking at me with warm concern in her brown eyes and she stated, “I’m drowning in bitches all day, been doin’ that shit for years. I know a face like that when I see one. So tell me.”

  It was then I lifted my hands, covered my face and burst into tears.

  I did this for some time before a large bunch of tissues was pressed into the hand she’d pulled away from my face and I turned teary eyes to her.

  “Tell me,” she urged.

  I didn’t know why, maybe it was her tone, the kindly look in her eyes, the things Jake told me about her.

  But I did.

  I wiped my face, blew my nose and told her.

  Everything.

  I told her how my grandfather treated my grandmother. How my father and uncle did the same as they grew up, in their way, doing precisely what they learned to do from their father. Disrespecting her. Verbally abusing her. Getting into trouble. Carousing. Making her life that was already a living hell much worse. And not giving a damn. Never giving a damn.

  I told her of my first living memory with my mother and father and a few more besides.

  I told her about Andy. How wonderful he was. How he was the best first boyfriend in the world. How he seemed to understand my father was awful and how he tried in many marvelous ways to make up for that. How he was so gentle with me. How he was so careful in keeping our relationship a secret. How I heard from my friend Alicia that after my father had hurt me, he’d gone quite mad and the police had to come and get him after he broke into my father’s house and was shouting at him and destroying things.

  I told her how that ended and how my relationship with my father ended.

  I told her about how I left Andy behind.

  I told her about Gran. How she saved me, took care of me, made me whole again.

  I told her about going to university, being carefree and happy and meeting a charismatic, handsome fellow student, falling in love and moving in with him after we graduated.

  I told her how he then cowed me, scared me with his temper, and finally beat me.

  I told her about how I escaped again to Gran, found Henry, put on my disguise and lived my lie.

  I told her about Gran dying, the will, Gran giving me to Jake, and Jake taking me.

  And last, I told her all that had happened since then, with Jake, with Jake and Mickey, with Jake and Henry, finishing with my heartbreaking meeting with Henry just hours before.

  Through this, she worked on my feet, she worked on my nails and she listened. A woman, who in our limited communications would barely let me get a word in edgewise, said nothing but a few “okays,” “mm-hmms,” “shits,” “holy craps,” and the like.

  But when I was done, she looked me right in the eye and stated, “Sister, that is one helluva crazy fucked up story.”

  And strangely, her saying that, her seeing it that way, her confirming what I knew to be true in my heart seemed profound. So profound it opened something inside me that felt like it shone out, starting to burn away the last vestiges of my disguise.

  “And hearing that makes you more legend than you were before,” she went on.

  What she said before felt nice.

  That, however, confused me.

  “Pardon?” I asked.

  “Girl, your dad bein’ that big a dick, your mom takin’ off on you, your first man fucking you over that huge?” she asked, shook her head and kept speaking. “That’d break a lot of women. Especially that shit happening since freaking birth. Even before, you knowin’ your grandmother lived that same life. Fuckin’ crazy. But you?” More shaking of the head. “Didn’t break you. You got yourself a fancy-assed job trotting around the globe hobnobbing with the coolest of the cool, soaking in all that style and turning it back on the world. You freakin’ rock.”
>
  “But…um…” I stammered. “Don’t you think it’s rather weak that I hid and didn’t—?”

  “Babelicious, we all do what we gotta do to survive. You survived on designer dresses, first class plane tickets, champagne and caviar.” She grinned at me. “I think you did all right.”

  I hadn’t thought of it like that.

  And thinking about it like that, it occurred to me that I actually did.

  “Mrs. Malone, totally the shit,” she stated. “Giving you to Jake in her will?” She shook her head, her lips curved up. “Always knew that old broad had it goin’ on. Didn’t know she totally had it going on.”

  “This is true,” I said on a grin.

  Alyssa winked at me then looked back at my nails.

  “Sucks what happened with that Henry guy, though,” she continued. “I mean, I’m sad for both of you, all that unrequited love for years. It’s like one of those messed up art house movies that you think is going to be this epic love story but ends with no one getting what they wanted and makes you want to go straight to the bar after the movie and down a dozen shots of vodka to forget you saw that shit.”

  “That is what it makes me feel like doing,” I confirmed and smiled at her when she looked up from polishing my nails. “But a mani-pedi from a kind woman who’s a good listener might be better,” I finished quietly.

  She gave me a soft look that made her prettiness even prettier before she noted, “What’s even better is that I’m gettin’ that vodka in you after this shit dries.”

  “Yes, that’s even better,” I agreed.

  She again focused on painting my nails.

  So I said to the back of her head, “Although I’m much looking forward to that, I don’t relish telling Jake what happened with Henry today.”

  When I did, her head snapped back and I saw her eyes were huge and definitely her voice was shrill when she cried, “Say what?”

  “I…uh…well, don’t relish telling Jake what happened with Henry this afternoon.”

  She shook her head in short shakes like she was trying to clear it even as she shoved the varnish brush back into the bottle. Then her gaze locked on mine.

  “Sister, you cannot tell Jake any of that shit.”

  I felt my brows draw together. “Why not?”