by McNear, Mary
Which was why this morning’s decision to transfer the money from the college savings account into their checking account, and to write a check for the same amount, had been such a wrenching decision for her. She hated the thought of giving that hard-earned money to someone as undeserving as Bobby. But even more, she hated the thought of Jeremy finding out about it.
The one thing that gave her hope that he might not find out right away was that it was Jax, with her head for numbers, who was responsible for both their personal finances and the hardware store’s finances. She paid the bills, and the taxes, and made all the deposits, withdrawals, and transfers between accounts. And Jeremy rarely, if ever, monitored those accounts. But he had access to all the information, and it was only a matter of time before he stumbled on the fact that Jax had emptied the college fund.
Jax’s plan, such as it was, was to somehow replace the missing money before that happened. How she would do that, of course, was anybody’s guess. She didn’t have another ten thousand dollars lying around. And she didn’t know anyone else who did, either. But maybe, she reasoned, if she was very careful with their family’s finances, and diverted as much money as possible back into that account, she could eventually build it back up again before Jeremy found out. It wasn’t a very realistic plan, she knew. But right now, it was the only plan she had.
“Hey, baby,” Bobby said, startling her as he slid into the booth across from her. She’d been so lost in her own thoughts, she’d forgotten to watch the door.
She looked at him now, warily, and was surprised to see how much prison had changed him. And not for the better, either. Outwardly, he looked more or less the same. He was a little thinner. His hair a little longer. But it was on the inside she knew the real changes had taken place. She could see it in the way he hunched protectively over the beer he’d brought to the table with him. And in the way his eyes shifted constantly around the room, as if trying to assess the threat level from every direction.
“Hi, Bobby,” she said, neutrally. “You’re looking well,” she lied, hoping to keep things on a friendly footing.
“You’re looking fat,” he shot back, after giving her the once-over.
“I’m pregnant,” she said, gritting her teeth.
“Jeez,” he said, taking a long pull on his beer. “How many kids will that make?”
“Four,” Jax said, hating him.
But the response didn’t get a reaction out of him. He wasn’t interested enough in her to care how many children she had, Jax realized. Instead, he looked around the room again, and Jax found herself doing the same. She was relieved to discover that nobody seemed to be paying any attention to them. She looked back at Bobby and watched in distaste as he swigged his beer and then set the empty bottle down hard on the table.
“What’re you drinking?” he asked, standing up.
“Coke,” Jax said distractedly, pushing her glass across the table to him.
“Jack and Coke?”
“A Jack Daniel’s and Coke?” Jax clarified. “For God’s sake, Bobby, I’m pregnant.”
He shrugged, disinterested. “Whatever,” he said.
“I’d like a Coke-a-Cola, if you’re getting another round,” she said, glaring at him.
“Fine,” he said. But instead of going to the bar, he stood there, a little awkwardly. “Uh, I’m going to need some money,” he said.
Jax sighed, reached into her wallet, and handed him some bills. He was back a few minutes later with their drinks.
“Is that for me?” he asked, eyeing the envelope.
Jax nodded and slid it across the table to him. “The check’s in there. It’s made out to cash, in the amount we discussed.” She forced herself to sound calm and dispassionate. This is a business transaction, she reminded herself.
Bobby took a long draw on his beer bottle and glanced around the bar again. Then he picked up the envelope, slid the check out, and gave a low, long whistle.
She watched him, marveling that it was even possible to hate anyone as much as she hated him.
“This should set me up nicely here,” he said, putting the check in his wallet.
Jax stared at him blankly.
“What’s the matter?” Bobby asked, his eyes narrowing.
Jax gave herself a little shake. She’d probably just misunderstood him. “Nothing. You just made it sound like you were planning to stay here. In Butternut.”
He drained the rest of his beer and smiled at her maliciously. “I am. Is that a problem?”
“Yes, it’s a problem,” she said, feeling a little tremor of panic. “It’s a problem because our agreement was that after I gave you the money, you’d leave Butternut. Remember?”
“Did I say I’d leave?” he said, leaning forward across the table. “Because if I did, I’ve changed my mind. Now that I’ve got some cash, I want to hang around here for a while. Keep an eye on my daughter. Make sure she’s being raised properly.”
Jax felt the color drain out of her face.
“That’s right,” he said, nodding. “I want to meet my daughter.”
“You can’t,” Jax said, her panic mounting. “You can’t see her. She’s not here. We sent her away for the summer. She won’t be back for . . . for a long time,” she finished.
“You know, I don’t believe you, Jax,” Bobby said, obviously annoyed. “I think you’re lying. I think you’re trying to keep me away from my daughter. But you can’t do that, Jax.”
I can damn well try, Jax thought, anger rising in her. And the anger, she decided, was better than the panic. It cleared her head.
“You promised me you wouldn’t have any involvement in her life,” she said, through clenched teeth.
“Promises are made to be broken,” he said, with a shrug. “Besides, I might run out of money sometime. And even though you’re crying poor now, I think there’s more where this came from.”
Before all those words were even out of Bobby’s mouth, Jax felt the baby twist around inside of her. It was such a sudden, painful movement that she thought for a moment she might scream. But she didn’t. Instead, she grabbed the edge of the table in front of her. Which was a good thing, since it steadied her when she felt the room tilt, precipitously, to one side. She heard the sounds in the bar—the hum of conversation, the tinkling of the jukebox, the slap of the screen door closing—fade into a distant murmur, as a cold, prickly sweat broke out all over her body. Then, a wave of nausea rolled over her like a steamroller. She was either going to faint or throw up now, she thought, but either way, it wouldn’t be pretty.
Somewhere, at the edge of her consciousness, she heard a voice. A familiar voice.
“Miss Jax, are you okay? What’s the matter?” And then the same voice, “What the hell did you do to her?”
It was Frankie, she realized with relief, as his massive face swam into view. He was kneeling beside the booth, shaking her shoulders gently. “Jax? What’s wrong? Should I call an ambulance?”
“No, no ambulance,” Jax said woozily. “I’m fine, really.”
“Well, you don’t look fine,” Frankie said doubtfully. “You,” he said, apparently to Bobby. “Get her a glass of water and some napkins. Now.”
For once, apparently, Bobby did what he was told to do, because when Frankie spoke again he addressed only her.
“Miss Jax, you don’t look good. Your skin . . . it’s almost gray. Please let me call an ambulance, or take you to the hospital myself.”
“No. Please don’t, Frankie. I’ll be all right. I promise.” She took a deep, shaky breath. She did feel a little better. She didn’t think she was going to faint or throw up anymore. But the panic? The panic was still there, thrumming through her veins. And as soon as she thought about what Bobby had said, it came rushing back.
Bobby returned from the bar then and set a glass of ice water and a stack of cocktail napkins down on the table in front of Jax. He slid back in across from her again and glanced, resentfully, at Frankie.
“I di
dn’t do nothing to her,” he muttered, under his breath.
But Frankie ignored him. He dipped a few of the cocktail napkins in the ice water and handed them to Jax.
“Put these on your forehead,” he instructed her. She did, and their cool dampness made her feel better still.
“Thanks, Frankie,” she said softly, dabbing her face with the wet napkins.
He stood up and turned his attention to Bobby. “I think it’s time for you to clear out,” he said quietly. And Jax heard the menace in his voice.
“We’re not done here,” Bobby said, irritably. “Jax and I still have some things we need to talk about.”
“Oh, you’re done here, all right,” Frankie said. “You can walk out or I can carry you out, but either way, you’re leaving now.”
“This is none of your business,” Bobby whined.
“Yes, it is. Miss Jax is a friend of mine, and you’re obviously upsetting her. Now let’s go.”
Jax looked over at Bobby, wondering if he was going to try to fight Frankie. She was half hoping he would. There was no question in her mind of who would win that fight.
But Bobby was mean, not stupid. He leaned across the table. “I’ll see you later,” he said to Jax, in a way that made it seem as if he were spitting each word out at her. And then he slid out of the booth and walked out of the bar.
“I’ll be right back,” Frankie said to Jax, lumbering after him.
Jax’s first thought, after they left, was that she should leave, too. The only problem was, she didn’t trust her legs to work yet. Her second thought was that she’d made a terrible mistake. She’d risked her marriage and lost ten thousand dollars, all for nothing. Bobby wasn’t going to keep his end of the bargain. He’d never intended to keep it. And Jax was stuck with him. He’d never leave now. Why should he when there was always the possibility that he might get more money out of her?
She started to cry now, quietly at first, and then louder. She didn’t care if anyone noticed her or not. What difference did it make? Her life, as she knew it, was over. It would never be the same again.
She was sobbing, miserably and uncontrollably, when Frankie came back five minutes later.
“He’s gone,” he said darkly, barely managing to wedge himself into the other side of the booth.
She nodded, without looking up, and mopped her face with the already wet cocktail napkin.
“Miss Jax,” Frankie said, “I thought you should know. I didn’t just tell him to leave the bar. I told him to leave Butternut, too. I told him to leave, and not come back.”
Jax looked up at Frankie in surprise. “You did?”
Frankie nodded. “He was threatening you. Wasn’t he?”
“Yes,” she said. Because what was the point in lying anymore?
“I thought so,” Frankie said. “Anyway, I had a little talk with him. I can be pretty persuasive when I need to be.” He spoke with a ghost of a smile.
Jax sighed and unceremoniously blew her nose into a cocktail napkin. “Thank you, Frankie,” she said. “For trying to help, I mean. But Bobby has no intention of leaving here. He has . . . other plans.” At the thought of what those plans might be, another sob escaped her.
“No, Miss Jax. Listen,” Frankie said, leaning forward. “He’s leaving. And he’s not coming back.”
Jax looked back up at him again and shook her head, sadly.
“Frankie, I don’t know what Bobby told you. But he’ll be back. He’s not done with me, or my family, yet.”
“Oh, he’s done all right,” Frankie said, confidently. “Trust me.”
Jax sighed, and suddenly she felt so tired now that it was all she could do not to put her head down on the table and go to sleep. She opened her mouth to explain to Frankie, again, that he was wrong. But she couldn’t. She didn’t have the energy.
Frankie, though, saw the skepticism in her expression. He leaned across the table and said, in a soft but urgent tone, “Miss Jax, I told Bobby to clear out tonight. I told him if I ever saw him in Butternut again, I would kill him. Plain and simple.”
“Frankie, why would you say that?” Jax asked, genuinely surprised. She knew there were people who were intimidated by Frankie’s size. But she had never been one of them. She’d known, intuitively, that whatever his past, he was the gentlest of men.
“I said that because I meant it,” he said, his eyes narrowing with resolve.
“Frankie”—she shook her head—“you wouldn’t really kill him, would you?”
“Yes, I would. I’ve done it before,” he said, quietly. “Killed a man, I mean. And Bobby knows that. We did time in the same prison. I told Bobby I’d do it again in a heartbeat if he didn’t leave you alone. And he believed me. Trust me, Miss Jax. I saw it in his face.”
“You killed a man?” Jax asked, disregarding the rest of what he’d said.
“I did,” Frankie said.
“Why?” she asked, saying the first thing that came to her mind.
“The ‘why’ is not important,” he said, with a wave of his enormous hand.
“It is to me,” Jax said.
He frowned, thinking it over. “Okay,” he said, finally. “I’ll tell you what happened. But it stays here, in this booth, all right? Not even Miss Caroline knows this.”
She nodded and then hiccuped loudly.
He smiled and pushed her Coke closer to her. She sipped it, obediently.
“I grew up in this family that was . . . kind of crazy, I guess,” he said, with a sigh, his enormous shoulders hunching over. “My dad skipped out on us. My mom did her best, but honestly, Miss Jax, even her best wasn’t very good. She always had some boyfriend around. And most of them, well, they weren’t exactly the kind of guys who’d toss a baseball around with me, if you know what I mean.”
Jax knew what he meant.
“Anyway,” he continued, “one of Mom’s boyfriends liked to knock my little sister and me around. When I got bigger, of course, that wasn’t a problem. But by then, I guess, the damage had been done. Because when my sister got married, way too young, she married a guy just like my mom’s boyfriend. He was a real hothead. He’d have a bad day at work, or whatever, and he’d come home and, you know, blow off steam by . . .” He looked away, struggling with the memory.
Jax reached across the table and tried, ineffectually, to hold his enormous hand in her own small one. “It’s okay, Frankie. I get it,” she whispered.
“Anyway,” he said, “it made me crazy, the way he treated her. There wasn’t a lot that I loved in this world, but I loved her. She was a sweet little thing. Believe it or not, even with me for a brother, she wasn’t much bigger than you, Miss Jax. And I . . . I couldn’t stand to see her living that way. So I came over one night to have a talk with her husband. He’d been drinking. And we started fighting. I was stronger than he was, but he had a knife. I didn’t see it until it was too late. He was going to use it on me so I . . .” His voice trailed off.
“But, Frankie, that was self-defense, wasn’t it? Why did you still go to prison?”
“Well, the DA saw it differently, I guess,” he said with a shrug.
“Oh, Frankie,” Jax said, her eyes filling with tears again. “I’m sorry. It seems so unfair. But, Frankie, it still doesn’t explain why you’d threaten to kill Bobby.”
He thought about it for a moment and she could see that he was struggling, again, to translate his thoughts into words. He wasn’t much of a talker, Frankie. Or at least he hadn’t been before tonight.
“I guess I’d kill Bobby to protect you,” he said finally, after a long silence. “You and Jeremy. And the girls, of course. All of you, you helped me,” he said, simply. “When I came to Butternut, straight from prison, Miss Caroline and your family, you all took a chance on me, and I’ve never forgotten it. I never will forget it.”
“Frankie, we didn’t do that much,” Jax protested.
“You did plenty for me,” Frankie said. “When Miss Caroline gave me that job, I had nowhere to
live. Nobody wanted to rent to an ex-con, but Jeremy helped me find that apartment over the Laundromat. He even cosigned the lease.”
Jax nodded thoughtfully. She remembered Jeremy doing that, but it hadn’t surprised her. That was just the kind of person he was.
“Then, after I moved in,” Frankie continued, “it turned out the apartment needed a lot of work, but I didn’t have any money saved yet. Jeremy helped me again. He gave me a line of credit at the hardware store, and I got what I needed and I did the improvements myself. I know you haven’t been there, Miss Jax, but it’s real nice now. Cozy, I think you’d call it.”
Jax smiled at his choice of words. She had known that Jeremy had helped Frankie then, too. “But, Frankie,” she said now, “you paid the money back. You don’t owe us anything. Not anymore.”
“It isn’t that I owe you anything,” he said, carefully. “It’s that people like you, you’re good people, that’s all. And maybe, in your life, you’ve seen mostly good people, too. But, Miss Jax, from where I’ve sat, I’ve seen mostly bad. Or maybe just too damaged to be good anymore. Anyway, it’s what makes me want to protect someone like you and your family. You’re kind. Sweet. Innocent-like. And I want you to stay that way.”
But Jax’s mind had caught on the word innocent. Her eyes dropped to the table. “I don’t know how innocent I am,” she said softly. “The truth’s a lot more complicated than that.”
But Frankie disagreed. “I don’t mean I think you’re perfect, Miss Jax. Everyone makes mistakes. But like Miss Caroline always says, everyone deserves a second chance. Or most people.” His eyes darkened, and Jax knew he was referring to Bobby.
She sighed now, taking another tiny sip of her Coke. She’d stopped crying, at least in part because Frankie had distracted her by telling her about his own life. Now, inevitably, though, her thoughts returned to her own situation.
“Frankie, do you really think Bobby will stay away from here now?”
“I know he will,” he said calmly.
“And if he doesn’t?”
“You let me worry about that. But for now, Miss Jax, I need to walk you to your car. Things are already starting to go south around here.”