by Toni Blake
“So…I really hope Mick Brody didn’t steal my telescope, and I really hope he’s not doing anything terrible in that cabin—but at the same time…maybe I don’t really want to be the one to get him in trouble since, if nothing else, he made me feel attractive. That’s probably why I did it. Because he made me feel desirable.”
Across from her, Sue Ann looked thoughtful, then frank. “That’s all very nice, Jen, and I’m really glad this made you feel good about yourself again, but…could the reason you had sex with him also have been, just maybe, because he was hot?”
Jenny blinked. Clearly, Sue Ann thought Jenny was working too hard to justify what she’d done. But the bigger shock to her was, “You thought Mick Brody was hot back in the day?” She squinted her surprise beneath the bright sun.
Sue Ann shrugged. “In that rough-and-tumble kind of way, sure.”
“You never said anything.”
Another shrug. “It never came up. And maybe I worried you’d think I was gross for thinking so. The Brodys were so…socially off-limits.”
“Well, actually, I thought he was hot, too—at least the one time I saw him up close—and I never told you, either, for the same reason.”
“Wow. Small world. Maybe every girl secretly thought he was hot and was just afraid to say. So—is he still? Hot?”
Jenny nodded. “As much as I could tell. But it was nearly dark, so I couldn’t see him very well.”
Sue Ann’s jaw dropped. “You had sex with a guy you couldn’t even see?”
Now it was Jenny’s turn to shrug. “Sort of.”
“Wow. It’s fun to hang with you these days. You’ve had more excitement since yesterday than I’ve had in five years.”
“And it only cost me my peace of mind.”
Sue Ann sighed. “You didn’t have that anyway. So cheer up. Maybe it only cost you a pricey telescope.”
Jenny worked in the living room, listening to the clinking and clanging of tools on the other side of the wall as her dad tried to fix the air conditioner. It wasn’t broken completely, but when she’d gotten home after lunch with Sue Ann at Dolly’s Main Street Café in town, the house wasn’t cooling well. And after last night, the last thing Jenny needed was to be overheated.
When she heard her father grumble and cuss under his breath, she called, “Sorry about this, Dad.” If she wasn’t here, after all, it wouldn’t matter if the A/C was working or not. Even if her father had pretty much insisted she stay in the house when hers had sold so quickly.
“Don’t apologize,” he called back to her. “You know how happy I am to have you here.”
The words made her feel a little guilty—the same guilt she’d felt upon settling in Columbus after graduating from Ohio University. It had meant leaving her father alone. But she’d always come home for every holiday and for long summer weekends, and given that he’d lived here his whole life, he had plenty of friends.
Pushing aside her guilt, she continued unpacking. She’d put all of her furniture and most of her other belongings in storage for now, but she’d brought along some magazines and books to make the place feel like home—like her home. Mostly astronomy reference books and some of her favorite coffee table books featuring good visuals of planets, galaxies, and nebulae. From the moment she’d let her dad talk her into coming here for the summer, she’d planned on doing a lot of sky-watching.
Which, of course, brought back thoughts of Mick Brody. Not that they’d been far away—“the Brody incident,” as Sue Ann had taken to calling it over lunch, had continued to dominate their conversation. In fact, Jenny had planned to use the lunch to catch up with Sue Ann and ask about some of her old friends and neighbors, but casual sex clearly superseded catching up.
So now she officially had Mick Brody on the brain. Which was better than having Terrence and Kelsey on the brain. Maybe.
And what was up with her telescope? She was trying not to think about that part—somehow hoping it might magically appear somewhere, on her doorstep, or on the dock. In fact, when Sue Ann had driven her home, they’d both carefully scanned the whole area, just in case, and after calling her dad about the air-conditioning, Jenny had sat in the front porch rocking chair, watching the lake and the steep shore beyond for any sign of Mick.
If the telescope didn’t turn up, if he didn’t bring it back on his own, would she return there? Would she dare go up to that cabin? Her stomach pinched just thinking about it.
He’d been angry enough just finding her in his woods—how angry would he be if she came to his door, even if she had a perfectly valid reason? And how weird was it that she was so scared of a guy she’d actually allowed to penetrate her with his penis, for heaven’s sake?
Oh my—the thought brought another wave of heat over her in the already too-warm house. But what a penis it had been. Not that she’d gotten a really good look at it—but good enough. And she’d certainly felt the full impact of it. She bit her lip, remembering the pleasure of being filled that way. The pleasure of being filled a whole new way, by a whole new man, a man who was driven to seduce her at the precise time he was trying to get her off his property.
That part hadn’t escaped her. He’d been so determined to make her leave—he must have wanted her pretty badly to have forgotten about that for a while.
Or…maybe it just meant he was a typical horn dog guy.
But even if so, to her surprise, the forbidden excitement of the event, the sensation of being wanted, was beginning to override the horror and emptiness of having meaningless sex. In fact, maybe—for her anyway—those things alone, coming at this particular moment in her life, were enough to give it meaning.
When her father grumbled again, following the loud bang of some tool or other, Jenny flinched—at how violently thoughts of what she’d done with Mick Brody clashed with thoughts of her dad. She instantly likened it to what happened when two stars collided—a scorching explosion that dwarfed anything we could comprehend here on Earth.
Her father had always disliked the Brodys, as most people did—he’d warned her to stay away from them as a child, and she knew he’d had several run-ins with them in his job. He’d arrested the older boy, Wayne, at least twice, once for a bar fight, and once for breaking into McMillan’s Hardware, right next door to Dolly’s Café. He’d made the long, twisting drive out to the isolated south side of the lake when people on their own side had heard gunshots and yelling, and he had arrested Harlan Brody, the father, on a domestic charge. And she recalled that both Brody boys had been suspected in a liquor store robbery in the neighboring town of Crestview while she’d been away at college.
That’s when it hit her. Wow. Had she just had sex with a guy who robbed liquor stores? The very thought made her shiver.
And what was he hiding in that old cabin? What was his big secret? With his reputation, she imagined it could literally be anything!
Oh boy.
She blew out a long, slow breath, absorbing the revelation.
She supposed when she’d argued with Mick, and when she’d allowed him to seduce her, she’d been thinking primarily of that boy she’d met at her dock as a teenager. Gruff, and from the wrong side of the tracks—or the lake, in this case—but that was a far cry from being a guy who really broke the law, who robbed places!
She bit her lip, wondering: Did you do that, Mick? Did you rob that liquor store with your brother? And what else have you done? Maybe she was lucky just to leave there unhurt; maybe a telescope was a small price to pay.
Except she still wanted that damn telescope—badly. Not to mention her star charts and the journal where she recorded notes on all her sky-sightings.
She unpacked a few more books, then found a spot to stack some of them—on the small bookshelf below the shrine to her mother. She stopped then, unwittingly kneeling before it, and stared up. Atop the waist-high shelving unit sat an array of framed photos of Judy Tolliver—some with Jenny as a child, others with Jenny’s dad or by herself. A Bible sat among the photos,
as did a framed copy of the little tribute program from the funeral home given out to everyone who’d come to pay their respects that winter day eighteen years ago. Beloved Wife and Mother. God’s daughter. At rest now, in His arms.
Two dusty, never-lit pillar candles sat on candleholders at either side of the display, and above it all, on the wall, hung an enormous photo of Jenny and her mother when Jenny had been only five years old. Her mom had been a bridesmaid in Aunt Carol’s wedding and Jenny had been the flower girl, so in the picture they stood together before a grouping of pine trees wearing matching rose-colored dresses, with wreaths of pink rosebuds and baby’s breath adorning their heads. Jenny’s father had loved the picture and insisted on ordering one in gargantuan proportions, and it had hung in their living room ever since.
Of course, the rest of the shrine had come later, when Jenny was thirteen. While other girls had been worried about periods and first dances and crushes on boys, Jenny had juggled all that and her mother’s death from cancer.
Pillar of the community, always helping with this fund-raiser or that bake sale, if there was a cause in Destiny, Judy Tolliver could find it and fix it. She’d been a perfect police chief’s wife. When someone’s house burned down, Judy Tolliver had handled the clothing and furniture drive and made sure the family had a place to stay. When the school system threatened to take away music and art classes, Judy Tolliver had organized the PTA and the whole community to combat it. When a real estate developer tried to buy the land where the tidy little Pinewood Mobile Home Park sat, ready to rush the mostly elderly residents from the only housing they could afford, Judy Tolliver had gone door to door with a petition, finally convincing the town council not to approve it.
But while the rest of Destiny had lost a kind, loving woman always ready to lend a helping hand, Jenny had lost a mother. Someone to talk to about school and boys and bras…and stars. Indeed, it had been her mom who had first introduced her to the mysteries and majesty of the night sky, who had bought her that first telescope—not much more than a toy, but it had been enough to turn Jenny into a hard-core astronomer at an early age.
And with a mom like Judy and a police chief for a dad, could Jenny have turned out any less than utterly pure and wholesome? She’d been taught to care about good and bad, right and wrong. She hadn’t drank underage, or had sex before falling in love, and to this day she’d never even smoked a cigarette. She’d been the ultimate goody two-shoes, willingly, all her life.
Until last night.
And when her father had moved out of the lake house and into town a few years ago, Jenny had been surprised he hadn’t sold the old cottage—until now. Because only now, upon actually moving back in here, did she truly realize that everything in the house was exactly the same as when she’d grown up, right down to the dishes and the doilies. Right down to the shrine.
And as she rose to her feet now and backed away, she found herself wishing she could take down the huge photo in its gold gilt frame. Not that she didn’t love the picture—she herself had kept a five-by-seven version on her dresser in Columbus—but this one was just…too big. For the room. And for Jenny’s life now. Losing her mother at such a young age had been the tragedy of her existence, but she’d long since moved on, and something about the huge presence her mother still held in this room took her back there, to the loss, to the desperate disbelief and denial and sorrow, to the memories of her mother lying in a bed upstairs, withering away to a shell of her former self.
Whoa. You’re back to being “not you” again—being pretty darn morose, in fact. How had that happened?
“It’s this picture,” she muttered under her breath.
“D’you say somethin’, honey?” her dad called from the utility room just off the kitchen.
“No, Dad. But how’s it coming in there?”
“Think I pinpointed the problem. With any luck, we’ll have ’er cooled down in no time.”
Jenny smiled. Her dad sounded more chipper now. And unless she was imagining it, the house might be cooling by a few degrees already. As for the picture of her mother in rose taffeta, she still found herself wanting to take it down and feeling guilty about it at the same moment. Wow, for a girl who’s spent her life doing nothing wrong, you sure keep finding a lot to feel guilty about.
But the picture would have to stay. The house belonged to her father—she was a temporary visitor here. She’d just have to get used to it again, and then she’d probably quit seeing it, just like most things you passed by every day.
Returning to the couch, she situated her favorite astronomy coffee table book right where it should go—in the center of the coffee table. In case this is the only way I get to see the stars this summer.
She looked up just as her dad walked in the room in his beige police uniform, wiping his hands on a rag. He’d come over as soon as his shift had ended, but he kept his police radio on his belt at all times, and it buzzed unsteadily even now. “Feelin’ cooler to ya yet?” he asked.
She nodded. “Much better. Thanks, Dad.”
“By the way, I saw Miss Ellie and Linda Sue in town at the drugstore this mornin’. Miss Ellie’s havin’ a garden party Sunday afternoon—it’s her eightieth birthday. She asked me to invite you.”
Jenny lifted splayed fingers to her chest. “Miss Ellie is eighty? Oh wow, I had no idea she was that old.” Miss Ellie had lived in the house to the right of the cottage for Jenny’s entire life, and she kept a lovely English garden in her big side yard, complete with a small gazebo.
“Of course, it’ll mostly be Linda Sue and Mary Katherine throwing the party, but Miss Ellie said she’d seen you were staying here at the house and she’d love for you to come.”
“Did she ask why I was here?”
He shook his head, fully aware that Jenny didn’t look forward to telling still more people she’d gotten divorced. “Nope.”
“Well, I’ll be there, of course.”
“Tell ya what—I’ll pick you up and you can be my date.” He winked.
And she said, “Dad, can I ask you something sort of personal?” They’d grown close after her mother’s death, but this was a topic they’d never covered.
He suddenly looked a bit uneasy, but said, “All right.”
“Have you ever dated anyone since Mom died?”
He looked like she’d suggested he take his squad car on a wild rampage through Miss Ellie’s garden. “Why, no—of course not.”
She’d pretty much figured that, but had felt compelled to ask anyway. “Do you ever think about it?” After all, he was only in his early fifties, he had a respectable job, a pleasant home, and he was a nice man.
“Well, no, can’t say that I have. I mean—who could ever replace your mother?”
She tilted her head and tried to look cheerful. “I wasn’t suggesting you replace her, but…wouldn’t it be nice to have someone to go out to a movie with on a Saturday night up at the Ambassador? Or to take to the annual Fourth of July cookout at Betty and Ed’s house?”
Her father stayed quiet for a moment, then said, “Don’t you worry about me, Jennygirl—I’m fine just as I am. I’ve got plenty of folks to be with and you know that.”
“I know. I was just thinking that…well, it’s been a long time, Dad. And I’m sure Mom would want you to be happy.”
“Then she’s already got her wish,” he said with another big wink. “You let me know if this air-conditionin’ gives ya any more problems, and otherwise, I’ll see ya Sunday—about one o’clock?”
She relented and let the matter drop. “All right—see you then.” After which she pushed to her feet and gave him a small hug while planting a kiss on his cheek, the tip of his big gray mustache tickling her lip.
As she listened to his car drive away a moment later, she realized she was looking forward to Miss Ellie’s party. Sort of.
A lot of people in Destiny, especially the older residents, were…weirdly stuck in another time. A comforting time. But also a time when…d
ivorce was frowned upon, for any reason—even a cheating husband, she suspected. And she was pretty sure most of them would have heart attacks if they knew what she’d done in the woods last night.
By ten o’clock that evening, Jenny felt…almost content. Still aggravated about the whole telescope situation, but she’d spent the day making peace with herself over the sex. Mostly. And as the evening had passed, she’d quit seeing that huge picture of her mother. Mostly.
She’d cooked herself a hamburger and a baked potato on the gas grill on the back patio and sat outside at the picnic table to eat, despite the remaining heat that hadn’t waned at day’s end. Afterward, she wandered over the soft grass in bare feet to an old swing hanging from a maple tree in the side yard, and from there, she’d peered out across the lake, quiet and smooth as glass at that time of the evening, appreciating the peaceful view. She’d glanced over into Miss Ellie’s garden, across the empty green space that sat between their homes, and drank in the profusion of color. She’d listened to birds singing in the trees.
As night had begun to fall, she’d thought longingly of her telescope, but pushed it aside, telling herself that maybe he’d…mail it back to her or something. Of course, that would require him going to a post office. Being seen. Just as bringing it here to leave on her doorstep as she’d hoped earlier would also do. But…maybe he’d be decent enough to get it back to her some other way. She had to keep telling herself that, since she just couldn’t accept losing it the way she had.
Now she sat curled on the couch in a butter yellow cami and jogging pants, the old afghan pulled half over her since the air was going full force again, eating a chocolate chip cookie, and watching some crime show on TV.
Just as the guy on TV, a detective, crept through a dark warehouse where he suspected a crazy burglar was hiding out—a knock came on Jenny’s back door and sent her nearly leaping out of her skin.
Catching her breath, she set her cookie aside and rose to answer, except—who on earth would come to the back door?