by Sara Evans
“You figured right, Rebel.” Jade fired off a couple of visual daggers. “I am a reasonable woman. A smart woman.” She glared at June. “I’ll be upstairs.”
“She’s foolish to leave him.” Rebel’s exasperated expression punctuated his comment. “Does she think men like Max hang out on street corners waiting for women like her?”
June stepped toward him. Once. “Do you think women like Jade stand around waiting for men like Max? Men like you? He’s blessed to have Jade. Unless he’s blown it. Now, why don’t you go on home. Leave me be. What, is Claire busy tonight?”
“The governor appointed me to the court.” As Rebel drew up, squaring his shoulders, extending his back, his persona increased.
“Well, Rebel.” June propped her hands on her waist, slipping her fingers through the jeans’ belt loops. “The pinnacle. What you’ve always wanted.”
“We, Junie. What we’ve always wanted.” An excited light beamed from his hazel eyes. “The state supreme court.”
“What I’ve always wanted? No, you Rebel. What does the court do for me except enlarge your shadow over me?”
He took off his coat and draped it over the wingback chair. Don’t, Reb. You can’t stay. “So, that’s it? I’ve overshadowed you? Poor June, never had a life of her own? Just all she ever wanted. The wife of a successful man. Nice house, friends, status, cars, European vacations, political and social connections, clothes from Paris.”
“You forgot ‘faithful and devoted husband.’” June stepped toward him, catching a whiff of his cologne. The fragrance, along with his projecting persona, nearly choked her resolve. “Rebel, I’m not sure I want this anymore.” She gestured her hand in the space between them.
“Or course you do.” Rebel tucked his hands in his slacks pockets, his posture for closing arguments. “Forty-one years can’t end because of a woman like Claire. We belong together, June. It’s only been you for me. Now, see here, the governor’s wife has invited you to a tea next Wednesday. I’ll be sworn in on Friday.” He locked his eyes on hers. “You must be there.”
“Beryl is dying. I won’t leave Jade alone here.”
“Jade? She’s a big girl, June. She doesn’t need you mothering her. Besides, where are her brother and sister?” He stepped toward her, covering her doubts with his shadow. “What do you want from me? To say I’m sorry? It’ll never happen again?”
“Yes, Rebel, for all that’s decent, yes.” Adrenaline flowed like lava through June’s veins. “I’m sick of this routine, this game. I’m sick of your infidelity, sick of being held hostage by status and, well, lack of a better idea of what to do with my life. Sick of paying over and over for my one mistake.” June swore, hard bitter words. “I’ve had enough guilt for two people’s lifetimes and I’m done, Rebel, done.”
“One mistake? One?” Rebel held up his index finger.
“Yes, one.” June narrowed her gaze at him, crossed her arms, and willed her thudding heart to rest. “Then you took revenge, Reb. Revenge. You’ve stabbed my heart over and over, and some nights I would hurt so bad I prayed you’d just leave me. Tell me, Reb, did you stay so you could punish me? Endlessly?”
“No.” The word came from his throat, his lips drawn, his jaw tense. “I stayed because I loved you.” His eyes searched hers.
“Loved me? Rebel, you’ve had dozens of affairs. Is that your idea of love? What would you have done if you wanted to punish me?”
He shifted his gaze to the ceiling, tightening his jaw so the muscle bulged. “It just got easy, that’s all.”
“Easy?” June collapsed onto the coffee table. “Easy . . . Do you know how many nights I cried myself to sleep when you traveled out of town, wondering if you were finding pleasure in another woman’s arms? How helpless I felt to stop you? I mentally packed my bags so many times, I actually believed I’d leave you. Just like I’d planned that night with Bill, but I couldn’t do it. Not to you, not to me, not to Max. I chose you over Bill because I loved you. So I was determined to find happiness, dreaming one day you’d stop cheating. But you never let up, Rebel. What was I supposed to think? If you love me, why?”
“I told you. It just got easy.” He turned his back to her. In his tailored slacks and shirt, hand-tooled leather shoes on his feet, Rebel was out of place in the boxy farmhouse living room with its brown walls and yesterday’s furniture.
“Does revenge taste that sweet, Reb?” Her emotions controlled her tongue, her words. “Should I try it for myself? See if Tom Carnahan would like a date? He’s always flirting with me, and—”
Rebel whipped around. “You stole my son, June!” His eyes blazed with the intense heat of his confession. “You stole my son. I had one chance”—he jabbed his finger in her face—“one, and you robbed me of it.”
“Oh, Rebel.” She pressed her hand to her chest, bile scorching her throat.
He grabbed his coat and burst out the door. June ran after him. The evening was crisp and still, and the moon was not yet in its orbit.
“No, Reb, no. What are you talking about? I ended it with Bill six months before I was pregnant with Max.”
“Stop, June, I’ve known.” He draped his coat over the rail and stepped into the yard, disappearing into the shadows. “You’re not the only one who knows what it feels like to be made a fool of, to have your love and trust trampled.”
“Rebel.” June remained with her toes lined up to the porch’s edge, clinching her jaw to steady her words. “This is crazy talk.”
“For thirty-eight years, I’ve shoved aside the nagging doubts. But with every growth spurt, I’d wonder if this would be the year he’d turn into Bill Novak. He looked so much like you, I found moments of rest, but when he took architecture in high school and sailed through with straight As . . .”
June’s breath escaped her—through her nose and mouth, out every pore of her body. Blood drained from her head until she saw spots. She gripped the porch post.
“How did you know?”
“Queenie Spencer called the night you left to meet him.” Rebel spoke from the outer reach of the porch lights.
June sank slowly to the steps, chilled to the bone, pressing her hand to her forehead. Queenie. One of her best college friends and an attendant at their wedding. “Reb, why didn’t you say something?”
“Why didn’t you?”
“She was supposed to cover for me.”
“She tried. But when I told her you were halfway to her house, she splashed her oar into the river and paddled in a panic, coming up with some lame story about getting the date of your girls’ weekend messed up.”
June covered her face with her hands, hot shame colliding with the chill in her soul. He’d known? For thirty-eight years?
“So you kept it from me and used it against me all these years.”
“It didn’t start out that way, June.” Rebel came up the walkway, slowly, scraping his heels over the pavement. “I fumed the entire weekend, ready to unload both barrels when you walked in the door. I’d planned to leave you. But when you came home, sad, guilty, broken, I knew it was over with Bill. So I stayed.” Rebel sat next to her, and the porch boards creaked. “It’s hell lying in bed next to your wife, knowing she’s hurting, but also knowing you can’t do a thing to help her.”
“I hurt because of what I’d done to you. Not because I loved Bill.” June clicked her thumbnails together. There were no tears for the situation. She’d cried them all. “If you’d confronted me, you would’ve known I broke it off with him. For good.”
“I had you home with me. That was enough. I guessed it was over with Bill and you were fine with it. We were moving on. Then you told me you were pregnant, and all the anger and bitterness came flooding back. It took over.”
“Do you want to know the truth?” June stared at her new shoes. “Or do you want to stay angry, cheating on me? But you should know, I’m not living like this the rest of my life.”
“You tell me. Is the story worth telling?”
June clasped her hands together in her lap. Peace whispered past. “After you found me with Bill, ready to leave you, I’d made up my mind to forget about him. You were my husband, and I loved you. I knew the affair was a mistake, childish, looking for attention in all the wrong places. A few months later he started calling. He asked me to meet him. You were so wrapped up in exams and studying for the bar, and I was so lost about what to do with myself, who I was to be. A lonely wife? A part-time interior designer?”
“You never said you wanted a career.”
“I didn’t know what I wanted. But when a handsome, successful architect called with passion in his voice, I convinced myself being loved and wanted was better than being loved and ignored.”
“I wasn’t ignoring you. I had exams!”
June stifled him with a flash of her palm. “He asked me to meet him, and so I did. Queenie never was good with dates.” She hated hearing the story. Foolish girl.
“I hired a detective agency to keep track of him for a year after that weekend.” Rebel’s confession didn’t surprise her.
“We met at a hotel in Asheville. What seemed like a happy, romantic, sexy tryst turned out to be horrible. We fought. And what I remembered as sweet, passionate lovemaking was rushed and selfish. When I woke up the next morning, full of regret, panic, fear, I ran. Packed my bags and ran. All I wanted was to see you, Reb. Bill manipulated me the entire affair.”
Rebel cleared his throat. “And Max?”
“Is your son, Rebel. My goodness, how can you even wonder? He may look like me, but the rest is all you, all Benson. Arrogant, competitive, yet sensitive and romantic. Smart. In fact, I’m fairly certain I was already pregnant when I went to see Bill.”
“Fairly?”
“I was late . . .”
“I see.” Rebel’s feelings rumbled in his chest. “Thirty-eight years . . . glad we cleared that one up.”
June’s laugh spewed, but another looming reality sobered her soul. “Look at the path you took because of one misunderstanding. How are we going to undo a lifetime of affairs, Reb?”
He propped his arms on his knees and patted his palms. “We can’t if you won’t come home, June.”
With an exhale, she shoved up from the porch. “Maybe, in time. You can live in the life you carved for us, Rebel, but I think there’s a new road out there with my name on it. For now, I’m going inside to build a fire and make my granny’s pound cake.” She held open the screen. “Have you eaten?”
“No.”
June opened the door wider. When the hinge squeaked, Rebel pushed up from the porch and followed her inside.
Twenty-one
Max bolted up from a dead sleep, the glass in his hand crashing to the floor. A shrill cry floated through the house. Jade’s kittens. For crying out loud, he’d just filled their food bowls.
Foggy and disoriented, he angled forward with his hand against the coffee table.
The cry resounded again. Shrill. Loud. Like a baby.
Max fired off the couch, knocking his knee against the coffee table. Tomorrow, the table was out of here. He never wanted the thing in the first place, but Jade insisted. Some precious antique.
Asa’s thin, high-pitched scream sliced the air. Max’s heart beat at the base of his throat.
“C-coming . . . Asa. C-coming.” Oh, his head. With each step, the room swam, his mind sinking into a dense fog.
The scream bounced against the fog so the noise consumed his whole being.
“H-hang on.” His voice was gravelly and weak; his legs fought to gain control of his motion.
Breathing deep and exhaling as far as his lungs would allow, Max stumbled up the stairs, gripping the banister.
Three more screams. Would he ever get to the room?
On the landing, Max wobbled, letting the black-and-blue spots fade before starting down the hall to his son’s room.
Asa was in his crib, naked and covered in feces—his face, his hair, the rungs of the crib, and the wall. “Asa?” Max’s step landed in something warm, wet, and mushy. He lifted his socked foot. And on the carpet.
Max reached for his screaming son. “Asa, Asa, here buddy.” But the baby was stuck. His wail rocketed to the ceiling, shattered, and rained down on Max.
Oh man, somehow Asa had wedged his leg between the crib rungs, his knee bent around one rod while his foot hooked another.
This time with tenderness, Max eased his son’s leg free. His screams eased, but tears ran down the boy’s flushed cheeks and terror lit his sloppy brown eyes.
Max patted his back, trying to clear his own head while figuring out how in the world the kid wedged his leg like that while painting the room in poop.
Asa shuddered as he sucked up his sobs. “Mess,” he said.
“I’ll say.”
The room had the aroma of a sewer. Max ripped off his soiled sock and dropped it into the crib. Then shutting the door behind him, he carried Asa to his room.
“Let’s get cleaned up.” And cleared up. Max stripped Asa, then himself, and climbed in the shower.
How many Percocets had he taken? Dad’s announcement about Clarence taking over the firm hit harder than he wanted to admit. When he got home he popped a couple, chasing them down with bourbon. He was flying high most of the night. Until he crashed.
Warm water washed over father and son. Asa shivered with a ghost sob, then patted the water with his pink, pudgy palm.
Lathering up his washcloth with soap, Max bathed Asa, who squirmed and tried to drink from the shower. When Max set him down on the tile, he saw the angry, brooding bruise forming on the trapped leg.
“Asa, I’m so sorry.” Max cradled him in his arms to examine the purple and brown flesh. Dread flowed over him along with the warm water. Had he not heard Asa’s scream?
Max collapsed against the wet shower floor, his stomach filling with disgust. He was a man with everything, yet possessed nothing. Once again, he was becoming an addict.
Everyone knew the walls of Granny’s old house were onion-paper thin. Except Rebel and June.
Gripping the wheel of Paps’s truck, Jade traveled along Old 163 toward the Colters’.
She’d slipped down the stairs and out the front door when Mama went to sleep. And after June and Rebel settled into a silent routine in the kitchen. Looked like he was on his BlackBerry while June stirred something at the stove.
Jade had tried not to listen, but hushed tones traveled faster and louder through the walls and thin paned windows.
So it all started with June. Complicated by Rebel’s doubts. Who was Max’s real father? June’s pledge to Rebel didn’t convince Jade one bit.
And what was that comment from Reb about the McClures suing Max for custody? That must have been what Max was trying to tell her the other night.
The news burned her with frustration. What did she have to do with any of it? She resented being a Benson dumping ground. Jesus help her, but she’d longed to marry into a strong, healthy family where she, the daughter of a hippie, could dump and disguise her gunk like weeds along the backyard fence.
Instead, she’d married into Oz. Nothing was as it appeared. Where were the Lord’s faithful and righteous?
What Jade had was a Melrose Place script. Granny had watched that show, munching popcorn, shouting at the TV, “Don’t do it . . . ah, I said, don’t do it!”
Cheating husbands, an illegitimate son, a supreme court justice, a barren wife, secrets and suits.
A house appeared on the horizon as Jade rounded the bend, its golden light luring her in. Every window was aglow. Downshifting, she made the left into the Colters’ drive, bouncing and bobbing over the winter-washed drive toward the back.
The barn doors were swung wide, the walls framing a square of yellow light. Jade cut the ignition and set the brake. What was she doing here?
Since Dustin’s hospital visit, she’d not seen or talked to him. But then Mama brought up the story of her sixteenth birthday party and she couldn’t stop thinking
about him. He’d danced with her that night. And at 11:59, Dustin Colter gave Jade her first kiss.
At the moment, she wanted to be near his familiar warmth, to hear his laugh, to forget about death and infidelity.
She wanted to feel sixteen again.
Jade wrapped her fingers around the door handle. God, if I shouldn’t be here, tell me now. After a second’s hesitation, she jerked the chrome lever and stepped out on the gravel ground.
The rhythm of an air tool zrrp, zrrp, zrrping was the song in the air. Jade peered through the opened doors as the late evening breeze nipped at her cheeks and nose.
Dustin worked on a stripped-down car that might have been a Camaro in another life. His faded jeans, with holes at the knees, were his trademark.
He exuded a certain kind of laid-back charm infused with confidence. Like he could handle any crisis or surprise thrown his way. Nothing was worth getting ruffled over.
Dustin caught her watching and did a double take. He grinned. “Come to watch a master craftsman at work? See how they do it?”
She laughed, but her heart stumbled a bit at the reverie in his tone. “Before you get famous and lose all my calls and messages.”
His quick smile accented the curve of his jaw and reminded Jade of the many reasons she fell in love with him in the first place.
“Dustin, I think—” Carla Colter popped out from behind the Camaro’s open hood dressed in coveralls and ball cap. “Jade, honey, what are you doing here? Is everything all right? How’s Beryl?”
“Fine, fine.” Jade cleared the lie from her throat, shifting her eyes from Dustin to Carla, who shoved her curls away from her face, exposing her kind expression. “Mama’s fine.”
“Listen.” Carla walked over and cupped her hands around Jade’s face. “I’m here for you. Call if you need me. I am so sorry about your mama. She’s become a good friend.”
Jade nodded, keeping her posture stiff. If she spoke, she’d crumble into the woman’s arms.