Never Let You Go

by Erin Healy

  Lexi hung up her book bag and jacket as she had Friday night, before her life started falling apart. She shoved a notepad into her apron pocket, and it hung up on something.

  The dog-eared photo Ward had left at his table last night, with black targets covering Molly’s pretty face. Last night, right before . . .

  Lexi shuddered and crammed the picture into her book bag. She entered the kitchen, trying to put the confusion out of her mind, and walked by a bucket of carrots that Chuck would expect her to dice if the prep cook got busy.

  Mr. Tabor was the only warm body in the restaurant so far. He was reading the newspaper. When she took him his orange soda, he folded the paper and set it aside, smiling at her. The wide, toothy grin was one of the dearest, most authentic gestures of human kindness she’d ever known.

  He patted his stomach.

  “Still got that hole there?” she asked.

  “That I do, child. It seems to be bottomless.”

  “I’ll top it off for you, then. At least for a little while. Who’ll be joining you today?” She asked so that she could be comforted by his answer.

  “Whoever God brings my way.”

  Lexi wondered if God actually worked like that, brought certain people into the lives of other certain people, or if the world was more honestly random. For some reason, she liked that Mr. Tabor believed God had a plan, even if she didn’t believe it.

  “I’ll go ahead and put in the Reuben for you.”

  She took a few orders, and about ten minutes later she picked up Mr. Tabor’s sandwich with a napkin for a hot pad and walked it to his table. Someone sat opposite him in the vinyl booth. Lexi marveled. Mr. Tabor never ate alone.

  “You be blessed today, lovely Lexi,” Mr. Tabor said, slipping three one dollar bills under his spoon. “You bring me life on a plate, like my own sweet lady used to do.”

  It was impossible not to smile at this man, no matter how sour her mood.

  “I forgot your slaw.”

  “All in due time. Dessert can never come too early or too late now, can it?”

  “I guess not.”

  She turned to the other guest at the same time Mr. Tabor said, “May I trouble you to bring my friend here something to drink?”

  Her eyes closed slowly, deliberately, as she did when she had to draw upon every reserve of her strength. Grant.

  She opened her eyes and lifted her eyebrows. “Of course.”

  “Just coffee.” He didn’t meet her eyes. “When you come back. Don’t make an extra trip.”

  As she wasn’t willing to slight Mr. Tabor’s kind heart by neglecting his table, Lexi returned immediately with a pot of black coffee, an empty cup, and a handful of creamers in her apron pocket.

  Mr. Tabor was saying a blessing over his sandwich, and Grant had bowed his head. Lexi couldn’t bring herself to set the cup on the table until they finished. In the whole of their brief romance and marriage, she’d never seen Grant bow his head to pray.

  His hair needed a trim. It was wispy behind his ears. His denim shirt was worn out at the elbows and seemed a size too big in the shoulders, which curved forward under some invisible weight. He used to carry Molly on those shoulders when he was clear headed. She’d throw her arms around his neck and hold on like a cape while he flew around the living room of their little Fireweed bungalow until he collapsed, blaming her for choking him to death.

  “That coffee’s growin’ cold in your very hands,” Mr. Tabor said, smiling before he took a bite of the Reuben. Lexi snapped out of her trance and poured the coffee without apologizing. Grant wouldn’t look at her.

  She left.

  Grant and Mr. Tabor talked for an hour longer than Mr. Tabor usually stayed. She had no idea what they discussed and did only what was necessary as their server, clearing the dishes and keeping the coffee and orange soda topped off. Then, after Mr. Tabor left at six, Grant continued to sit. He had the old man’s bill but didn’t seem in a hurry to pay it.

  Lexi smoldered. The only good thing about his being here was that it meant he wasn’t trying to visit her home. She wondered where Ward was.

  She wordlessly refilled his cup twice before mustering the nerve at six thirty to ask him if he wanted something to eat. When he declined, she suggested he give up the table for a paying customer. It was a slow Saturday, though, and at least three booths were unoccupied at the time. He allowed his eyes to pass over these without remark, then he withdrew his wallet from his back pocket and placed a five under the spoon that held Mr. Tabor’s standard three-dollar tip in place. She walked away feeling both angry and ashamed.

  At seven he paid the bill and Lexi returned his change. Between then and nine forty-five he examined the stain that had formed around the inside rim of his cup after asking her not to refill it any more.

  At ten, of her own accord, she took him a glass of water and the bowl of clam chowder that would have been hers to eat if she’d had any appetite. She set it on his table without saying anything. After she left the table, she saw him place a ten-dollar bill on top of Mr. Tabor’s ones and his five. She wished she hadn’t said anything about paying customers.

  By eleven, the restaurant was empty except for a few people who’d probably stay in the bar until closing. Some of them might order a bite to eat. She had wiped down tables, swept the floor, refilled the salt and pepper shakers, and married the ketchup jars.

  Lexi couldn’t stand it anymore.

  She dropped into Mr. Tabor’s seat.

  “What do you want, Grant?”

  “I want to talk to you.”

  “So talk.”

  He placed his hands palms-down on the table. “How’s Molly?”

  “Good, considering.”

  “How bad is the ankle?”

  “She broke it in three places and fractured six bones in her foot.” Lexi erected a barbed-wire fence around her heart to separate the physical facts from the worse emotional truth: her daughter was in pain and Lexi couldn’t rescue her from it. “We won’t know what that really means until the swelling goes down. A couple months in a cast at least. Maybe surgery.”

  “But she’s getting around?”

  “There isn’t too much that can keep her down.”

  “No?”

  That was the first time she had the conscious thought that Grant didn’t know anything about the girl his baby had grown into. She opened her mouth to tell him how headstrong Molly was, and all the ways that was a beautiful thing, then hesitated. Knowing a child the way she knew Molly was a privilege Lexi had earned. Why should she slice it up and serve it to Grant like one of Molly’s carefully prepared meals? He didn’t deserve it.

  “She’s a determined girl,” Lexi said. She pulled the night’s receipts out of her apron pocket and began to sort them, to give herself something to look at.

  “She looks like you.”

  “Prettier,” Lexi said.

  Silence stopped them up for half a minute. She was aware that she was making this difficult for him. A part of her wished she could get over it. The stronger part insisted he be held accountable for the problems he’d caused and granted her permission to be a jerk.

  “I imagine you have some questions about why I left,” Grant said.

  She neither confirmed nor denied it.

  “I owe you an explanation.”

  “I’m not looking for one, Grant.”

  “Still.”

  “What will an explanation change, really? Why go through it? So please, let’s not. Not tonight. It’s late.”

  “I need to tell you, though. I’m hoping . . . I need you to forgive me, Lexi.”

  “You need.”

  He exhaled loudly.

  “You need,” she repeated. Her fingers closed on a stack of receipts. “Seven years without a thought of me or your daughter—”

  “That’s not true.”

  “—and your first words to me are about what you need.” Lexi slid out of the booth, sweeping the white slips of paper into a pile. “
Don’t throw words like true at me. If you want me to forgive you, Grant, I’m going to need at least another decade.”

  Grant reached out but didn’t touch her as she stood.

  “Lexi, wait.”

  “Why?”

  “Please hear me out.”

  “You know what? I don’t want to. In the space of twenty-four hours my ears have been chewed on by my daughter—who’s furious with me because of that letter you sent, by the way—and by my mother, and then I find out you have some royally twisted partnership still going on with Warden Pavo—”

  “Ward?”

  “And Molly almost died and my father’s out of his mind and my best friend’s in the hospital practically sharing a room with Norman Von Ruden.”

  “Ward’s in town?”

  “Funny, he said the same thing about you, and just one day ago you were both standing in this very dining room within spitting distance. He told me why you two are here, and honestly, I don’t get the joke. I’m not laughing.”

  “You’re mad about the note. I’m really sorry about that. It was one of the dumbest ideas I’ve had in a long time. Your mother thought—”

  “Stop. Just stop it, Grant. Take responsibility for your own actions for once.”

  Grant swallowed.

  Her anger simmered, but she didn’t leave the table. She was searching for a way to convince him to leave, forever this time, while fearing what might happen if he and Ward weren’t working together. Would Ward follow through on his threat to Molly if Lexi didn’t make an effort to pull together some money?

  The possibility loomed too large for her to ignore.

  She picked up the cash he’d left and crammed it into her apron with the receipts.

  “Ward told me about the money. About Molly. What do you have to say about that?”

  The frown lines between Grant’s blue eyes deepened. He shook his head. “I don’t know what you mean. What about Molly?”

  “Fine. We’re done. That’s all I need to know.”

  He got out of the booth and planted himself in front of Lexi before she’d taken a step. “Is he threatening Molly?”

  “You’re the one who’s threatening her!” Lexi’s voice was nearly a shout. “You’re trying to take her from me, and you’re going to use your mother-in-law and an old drug dealer to get her! Of all the low—”

  “That’s not even close to what I—What did Ward say to you?”

  Lexi’s mouth fell open, but nothing came out. It was the shock of believing him that silenced her. All he’d ever done was lie to her, but right now she believed his own fury, paternal and protective.

  “Where is he? When did he get to Crag’s Nest?”

  “I thought you knew.”

  “I haven’t seen that con since the day I left you.”

  A headache shoved memories around Lexi’s head like a ransacking burglar. Hadn’t Ward said he and Grant were together?

  “Do you still owe him money?” she asked.

  “A fair amount.”

  “He wants it back.”

  “Well I don’t have it.”

  “Are you working?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where?”

  “Janitorial stuff down in Riverbend.”

  Grant was probably earning less than she was. If he wasn’t also dealing drugs on the side. Lexi weighed this possibility. Grant’s return to the business could be the only reason Ward thought he could collect on his debt. If Grant had money that could get Molly out of a difficult spot, he owed it to her.

  Would Grant offer it?

  “Sounds like it’s time for the two of you to work something out,” she said.

  Grant picked his wallet up off the table and crammed it back into his pocket. Ward’s threats came to the front of her mouth, but she bit them back, unsure if it was in Molly’s best interest to tell Grant what was at stake. He might use it against her, her folly with Norm in particular, a reason to shoehorn himself rather than his money back into Molly’s life. Play the hero, the great defender.

  Lexi looked at the receipts in her hands, wondering why she hoped that Grant would never learn about the affair.

  He walked out without saying good-bye.

  { chapter 17 }

  When Lexi got home, Angelo was sitting in the chair Gina usually studied in. The reading lamp was the only light on in the house. She opened the door, and he stood, casting a burly shadow across the entire room. It touched her feet.

  “Thanks for staying,” she said.

  “Happy to do it.”

  Lexi leaned her book bag against the wall.

  “That’s surprising to me. That you’d be happy to babysit. I hardly know you.”

  He nodded, as if he understood the strangeness of that fact but didn’t find it strange at all. Lexi almost blurted that she would have slept more easily if he’d stay awake in the living room all night. Instead, aware of how awkward that would have been, she struck up a conversation, intending to get him to stay without asking.

  “It’s very hard for me to understand your interest in my family. As much as I appreciate it.”

  “That’s alright.”

  She thought he’d say more, but he didn’t.

  “Everyone’s good?” she asked.

  “The swelling in Molly’s ankle is almost gone.”

  This was perplexing news. The doctor had said she should expect it to be puffy for more than a week, maybe two.

  “My days are filled with inexplicable events,” she said.

  Angelo smiled and took a step forward. He reached out for Lexi’s jacket, and when she gave it to him, he hung it in the closet. She sat down on the sofa and he returned to the chair.

  Lexi felt oddly like she was in his home rather than her own. This felt good to her. This felt . . . relaxed. Like the responsibility for life wasn’t all hers.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Tired. But yeah. I’m okay.”

  “Ward didn’t look like a friend,” he said.

  So much for that warm fuzzy feeling. Tension reappeared between her shoulders. “You dive right into the heart of a thing, don’t you? He’s one of the many reasons I asked you to look after Mom and Molly tonight.”

  “What did he say to you?”

  “Oh, please. Angelo. I’ve taken advantage of you today. You don’t want to waste any more time on my problems.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “What’s it like, then?”

  “Tell me what he said.”

  She wanted to. For the next hour, she told him everything, finding safety in his being a virtual stranger. Somehow it was easier to disclose herself to a person she might never see again than to a close friend. Here she was, telling Angelo about things she’d never mentioned to Gina. Maybe the pain of his potential judgment was less frightening. The prospect of losing him was less severe. The cost lower.

  She told Angelo about Grant’s drugs, about his entanglement in Ward’s web, about Norman’s appearance in their lives, about the escape she’d found in his distraction until Tara died. Lexi told him about Grant’s abandonment and her father’s descent into a mentally safe place and how Alice abandoned him in the same way Grant abandoned her—even though her mother denied it. She explained how Gina had reconnected her to God and how after all this time she still didn’t understand what God wanted from her. By the time she finally told Angelo about Ward’s threats against Molly, she was sobbing.

  “I don’t know what I did to deserve this,” she cried. “I’ve worked so hard. What Grant did to Molly by leaving is . . . if he’d done it to me, that would have been different. But he did it to his daughter. That’s unspeakable. That’s . . . I can’t let him near her, do you understand? If he left again it would kill her. And now this! From both sides—Grant wants her and Ward is threatening her.” She shook her head. “If I lost Molly too . . . if anything happened to her I’d die. It would kill me. I can’t let anything happen to Molly.”

  Angelo had rea
ched out and placed his warm hand on Lexi’s shoulder, as he had after she fell apart at St. Luke’s. She tried to remember the last time someone had touched her so kindly. Except for Molly’s hugs, she couldn’t remember.

  She said, “What should I do?”

  “I’m better at listening than advising, unfortunately.”

  Lexi sniffled and laughed. “At any other point in my history I would have preferred that in a man.”

  He chuckled. She tried to take a calming breath, but it got hung up in her throat. She covered her wet eyes until she was breathing evenly again.

  “Molly showed me the letter from Grant,” he said.

  Lexi shook her head. “Don’t take it as a compliment. I told her she couldn’t see Grant and then brought you home with me. She sees you as competition.”

  “That’s normal for a girl her age.”

  “She wasn’t rude to you, was she?”

  “Of course not. She’s defensive of her dad, that’s all.”

  “You mean her idea of her dad.”

  “That’s all she has.”

  Lexi leaned back against the sofa cushions. “That was some letter, huh?”

  Angelo didn’t offer his opinion.

  “Let me ask you something,” Lexi said. “Friday morning I read that letter, and then I read it again yesterday morning, and it was a completely different letter. How’s that?”

  “It was probably the same letter the whole time.”

  “My eyes played tricks on me, then? Or my tired mind?”

  “Based on the story you’ve told me, I’d blame it on a tired heart.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You’ve done a lot for Molly since the two of you were left alone. You want to protect her and do what’s best for her. Then along comes something you see as a threat, something that you believe could undo all your hard work, and you’re going to read trouble into it.”

  “That doesn’t explain my first impressions of that letter.”

  “Maybe that’s all they were—impressions. Perceptions.”

  The theory wasn’t an adequate explanation for Lexi. She didn’t like the idea that she might not be in complete control of her own mind.

  “The love you have for Molly is very powerful,” he said.