Southern Fried Blues (The Officers' Ex-Wives Club)

by Jamie Farrell

  There was an easier answer.

  He could get out of the service.

  A shiver thrust through his shoulders and rocketed down his spine. Felt as if his life were ripping in two.

  He could have Anna. He could have the Air Force. Couldn’t have both.

  The bench across from him squeaked. Kaci shooed Lance out of the booth. “You deal with Major Heartbreak here,” she said. “If she’s looking half as bad as he is, she’s gonna need a friend too.”

  Jackson opened his mouth. Tell her I said hi. Tell her I love her.

  Tell her I’m sorry.

  None of them fit.

  “She knows, sugar,” Kaci said.

  And when she gave his hand a squeeze, he felt like she was using a Band-Aid to hold an earthquake together.

  She sashayed out the door.

  “So,” Lance said, “want to get shitfaced?”

  “Will it help?”

  “No, but it’ll give you a reason to look like that.”

  Jackson grunted. Lance ordered eight burritos and three bags of chips and salsa to go. The two of them loaded up in Jackson’s truck.

  “Class Six,” Lance said. “My treat. Merry Christmas.”

  Jackson didn’t figure the Class Six had anything that would touch his granddaddy’s moonshine, but he didn’t share that with anybody, so he pointed the truck to base.

  “And then,” Lance said, sliding on his aviator sunglasses, “you can help me figure out how to tell Kaci I’m getting deployed.”

  Maybe they’d need that moonshine after all.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  She loved him for who he was and what he did until who he was and what he did made her hate him.

  —The Temptress of Pecan Lane, by Mae Daniels

  ANNA SPENT THE weekend after finals at work. Her throat was raw, the skin around her nose so brittle she’d had to buy a tub of Vaseline. But there was filing and re-color-coding to do, and she’d promised Jules she’d run a few tests.

  Beat staying home watching Walker bang his little fish face on the side of the brandy snifter. Fish apparently didn’t appreciate The Wedding Singer.

  Besides, she’d relabeled the kitchen and bathroom cabinets already. She needed something else to organize.

  She started with the tests. Get the boring stuff out of the way first. Then she dove into the files, and the next thing she knew, nine hours and eight years’ worth of samples had passed. She drove home, warmed up a serving of hot dish, squirted it with ketchup, and ate it over a Buffy the Vampire Slayer marathon.

  Walker still didn’t approve.

  But she wasn’t in the mood for another Mae Daniels book.

  She wasn’t even in the mood for ketchup shots.

  “Relax,” she said to the fish, her voice as clear as if she were talking through water herself. “You don’t have enough blood for the vamps.”

  She fell asleep on the couch, and Sunday morning she went back to work. Corporate had asked for all the older data to be re-color-coded, they just hadn’t specified a time line.

  With school out and having to break up with Jackson—her heart squeezed out a few more tears, dripping acid down to her stomach—now seemed like the right time.

  Kaci brought her dinner Sunday night. Anna draped a cloth over Walker’s snifter and put on The Wedding Singer while they shared a pizza. When the rapping granny came on screen, Kaci developed a case of the sniffles.

  Anna blinked her own tenderized eyelids to peer at her friend. “Kaci?”

  “He’s leaving me,” Kaci said.

  She exploded in a beautiful mass of tears.

  Anna tossed her pizza on the ground and wrapped her friend in a hug. “What happened?”

  It was hard to get the whole story through the broken bits of words Kaci spit out between heaving gasps and sobs, but eventually Anna recognized deploy and months.

  “Oh, honey, he’ll come back.” Anna’s heart broke for her friend’s fears and her own love, who wasn’t coming back.

  She was an idiot for letting herself get that involved.

  “But I’ll miss him,” Kaci sobbed. “And what if—”

  “Oh, no, ma’am,” Anna interrupted. “No what ifs.”

  Kaci elbowed her. “What if you leave me too?” she finished with a dramatic flair.

  A week ago, Anna would’ve laughed. Today she felt her own case of the sniffles coming on.

  What if she moved home? Away from Kaci, away from her independence, away from this crazy beautiful life she’d made for herself?

  And what if she were never as happy again?

  “I want my mommy,” Anna suddenly whimpered.

  And she did. She wanted to go home to her mom and her dad, to Beth and Tony and the boys, to her family who missed her and loved her and who still might not accept that she was the first divorced Jensen in the history of the Jensens, but who had to love her anyway, because that’s what family did.

  “Don’t you dare leave over Christmas and not come back,” Kaci said. “I need you here. You hear me, sugar? Don’t you take the easy way out on me now.”

  Anna managed a hiccup that could’ve passed as a laugh. “There’s nothing easy about my parents’ couch.”

  “Oh, sugar.” Kaci dabbed at her eyes. “That’s the best news I’ve heard all day.”

  They spent the rest of the night alternately crying and laughing. By the time Kaci left, Anna was absolutely positive she didn’t have a single emotion left in her body.

  But then Jules called in sick Monday morning.

  And Shirley came tearing through the lab hollering about certifying the last shipment from EFA Inc., their newest vendor. Anna lost her temper and yelled back that it hadn’t been delivered yet, and Shirley told her to find it anyway. Not even the paperwork with the backup printout from the samples inventory database could convince her.

  So Anna spent the day in a stupor, tired of the lab, tired of running tests, tired of her life. She found the paperwork Jules had misfiled and had a sample delivered from the storage tanks, then set everything up to run the test in the morning. She’d delivered the final results of the day to Shirley’s office when she noticed something wrong in Jules’s cube.

  One of the stacks of magazines had fallen over, which was situation normal.

  But the sample container tucked in the corner behind the magazines wasn’t.

  “Dammit, Jules,” she muttered.

  Sure enough, it was the missing sample from this morning.

  Now she had two samples. Great.

  Anna grit her teeth and carried it to the samples storage locker.

  But then she thought about having another row with Shirley tomorrow when the tests hadn’t been run. She heaved a sigh, went to grab her protective gear again, and suited up to run the analysis.

  Three full runs later, Anna felt as though she’d swallowed the stuff. Her stomach burned with a nauseous twinge that went beyond I’m going to be sick and straight to this must be hell.

  Because the container was labeled 50/50 HRT biofuel, delivered Friday, from EFA Inc., but the contents were most definitely not.

  Not in the container from Jules’s cube.

  Not in the container that the field had trucked in today and that had been waiting all weekend for clearance to go into storage.

  But those two containers matched perfectly.

  Anna stumbled back to the storage locker. Her heart wanted to quit, and the air in the lab was too heavy to breathe. She’d used the fume hood properly and nothing smelled out of the ordinary, but the knowledge that something was very, very wrong made her throat and her tongue and her nasal passages swell with panic.

  She flung open the storage locker, scanning last month’s inventory until she found the previous sample from EFA, Inc.

  It tested wrong too.

  Completely at odds with the data in the inventory system.

  She’d run a test wrong, she’d missed a step, she’d added a wrong test solution, the timing was wr
ong.

  She’d done something wrong.

  Because the other option was that the problem wasn’t in the testing but in the fuel, the fuel labeled and approved by Jules, the fuel cleared for use in the planes she could hear flying overhead and cleared to be stored in the same tanks as the other biofuel.

  Anna wrenched her coat off and fled the lab.

  She needed fresh air.

  She needed to think.

  She needed to call Shirley. But most of all, she needed a minute to breathe.

  According to her lab results, it was the last minute she would have for a very, very long time.

  What she didn’t need was the heart-stoppingly handsome Southern gentleman leaning against her car, sweet spaniel at his feet.

  He straightened when she stopped. “Anna Grace?”

  And there it was. Just her name, but it said so much. Are you okay? What’s wrong? Let me fix it for you.

  “No,” she said.

  He watched her as he would a wounded coyote. He didn’t so much as twitch, but she felt him circling her, sniffing, looking for a way in. “Just wanted to talk.”

  Anna reached across herself to rub her stiff shoulders. She wanted to go home, run a hot shower, and crawl into bed.

  Looked like neither of them would be getting what they wanted tonight. “I can’t.”

  Radish whined.

  And suddenly Anna had more tears. Because she should’ve been able to talk to him. Because she needed to shut the door between them, but all it took was a whisper from him to keep it open. The backs of her eyes prickled. A lump grew in her sore, achy throat. “Please. I can’t tonight.” Because he couldn’t fix this for her.

  She wanted him to, though. She wanted to hand him the test results and Shirley’s number, let him call her and let them fix it.

  He stood there, watching her. Waiting to be asked.

  She didn’t move.

  Neither did he.

  At length, he looked past her to the building. “Work troubles?”

  She squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed at her temples. “My samples aren’t coming out right.”

  He straightened. “How not right?”

  “It’s just the samples from one company. The rest are fine.”

  “How not right, Anna Grace?” he repeated.

  Her whole body sagged. “The baselines are wrong.”

  “It’s not JP8? Not an authorized HRJ?”

  And this time she heard it.

  She wasn’t talking to quasi-boyfriend Jackson.

  She was talking to Major Jackson Beauregard Davis, officer of the United States Air Force, sworn to protect and defend the United States of America with his life.

  He stood tall, legs wide, arms over his chest, glaring at her as if she were an airman just out of basic who’d forgotten how to lace up her boots.

  “I think it’s contaminated,” she said, not because Major Davis intimidated her, but because she needed to talk through this to figure out how she was going to tell Shirley.

  “With what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is it flying?”

  “I—” She stopped, looked up at a set of blinking lights far off in the sky.

  “Is it flying?”

  Jules had been clearing the fuel for months.

  Last month’s shipment had gone to base two weeks ago.

  The shipment with contaminated biofuel was on base, in their tanks, fueling their cargo planes.

  Her windpipes were choking her, her body turning against her. “Yes.”

  He uttered something he definitely hadn’t learned in his momma’s house, then yanked his phone out.

  He pointed with it up at the lights. “That could be Lance.”

  She felt the blood drain from her face.

  And then he was dialing a number, half-turned away from her, but every word he said echoed like shattered crystal in her eardrums. “Colonel, we’ve got a problem.” He cut a glance back at Anna and cursed again. “Gonna need OSI and whoever can ground the fleet fastest.”

  Anna’s legs wobbled. Her knees melted to liquid balls between bones that couldn’t have been any stronger than spun sugar. Her hands shook so badly she could barely grip her own phone. But she had to call Shirley.

  Anna would probably lose her job, lose her tuition assistance, lose her apartment, and have to move home with her parents.

  She’d already lost all shot at finding any more happiness with Jackson.

  Because not only had he just told her loud and clear his job came before her, he’d also told her he didn’t trust her to solve the problem herself.

  And he’d done it by calling to report her to the Air Force’s internal version of the FBI.

  JACKSON COULDN’T DECIDE which was worse, explaining to the colonel that every military aircraft in the state of Georgia needed to be grounded until their fuel could be evaluated and cleared, or watching Anna lose that battle she was fighting against herself.

  Seared his heart when she turned her back to him. He knew it killed her to let him see her hurt and scared.

  Pretty much killed him that he had to do it, but if there was a problem with the jet fuel, his only concern needed to be getting those birds on the ground.

  Might’ve been some good in that too, since truth was, she didn’t want to love him back. If she wanted to make a criminal case out of his taking charge here, he’d go on and let her. Even if the thought made his heart flop around like that fish that smacked Louisa in the face. Catch and release with Anna Grace, it was.

  The colonel hung up soon as he had a grasp on the situation. Jackson kept his eyes trained on the C-130 lights. Wasn’t surprised when his phone rang with an unfamiliar base number.

  It was gonna be a long night.

  Anna retreated to the lab door, waiting for her boss, he assumed. Couldn’t see much of her, huddled as she was out of the light, but a single headlight lit her up good halfway through his call with OSI.

  The C-130 banked, then leveled off, its lights getting bigger on approach. He blew out relief he didn’t know he was waiting for.

  If the tests had been that bad, Anna would’ve insisted on the grounding herself.

  But she hadn’t argued when he’d suggested it, so knowing tonight’s missions were being recalled gave him some peace.

  The big guy climbing off the motorcycle next to Anna’s car didn’t.

  “Brad?” Anna straightened beside the building. “What are you doing here?”

  The OSI officer was still talking, so Jackson kept listening, answering “Yes, ma’am” and “No ma’am” as appropriate. Yes, ma’am, he was there at Rockwood Mineral Corporation now. No, ma’am, the lab tech wasn’t a flight risk. Yes, ma’am, she said the contaminated fuel was in the air.

  Lance was a damn good pilot. So were his buddies. They’d see it in the cockpit if something were wrong.

  Didn’t mean it wasn’t a risk though.

  “You seen Jules?” Brad said. “She didn’t come home from work.”

  Anna went so pale she turned white. “She called in sick today.”

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” Jackson interrupted the OSI agent. “Got another name for you.”

  He looked at Anna.

  Her eyes went shiny.

  “What the fuck’s he doing here?” Brad said slowly. “Aw, shit. That was you?”

  Jackson hit the mute button on his phone. “Need her name, Anna. Title too.”

  “What. The fuck,” Brad said.

  Jackson unmuted his phone. “Thinking you need to hurry, ma’am. About to get ugly over here.” He handed Anna the phone. “Tell her.”

  Anna went about her business telling the OSI officer that Jules had falsely cleared contaminated fuel for use, while Brad stood by gaping in denial. Jackson stood between the two of them, Radish at his feet, and waited for the rest of the fallout.

  But after Anna’s boss, Jackson’s boss, the OSI agents, and half the base security forces arrived, after they’d all been
separated and interviewed and talked past exhaustion, after they’d been cleared to go home for what was left of the night—with instructions to speak to no one, including each other, about this until further notice— Jackson still felt as if he were hanging.

  This was worse than when Daddy died. Because when Daddy died, it was the end. Over. He’d gone through all the stages of grief, repeating denial a couple of times before he came to terms with facing the rest of his life without the best man he’d ever known. But tonight, when Anna was gone before Jackson and Radish were cleared to leave, he knew as long as she was out there, making the most of her life without him, there wouldn’t be any closure for his heart.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  And they made beautiful biscuits together.

  —The Temptress of Pecan Lane, by Mae Daniels

  ANNA SPENT THE rest of the week on administrative leave. Kaci popped in daily. Anna’s mother, bless her heart, flew in midweek.

  OSI had told her not to leave town until their investigation was complete. She had no idea how long that would be.

  Shirley had been furious, but she’d swung by as well. “We should’ve been the ones to report this,” she said Thursday afternoon at Anna’s little dining area table.

  She might as well have impaled Anna’s heart with that damn angel pin she was wearing again.

  “You shouldn’t have put her in this situation in the first place,” Anna’s mother said. She was in the kitchen, whipping up a batch of maple bacon chocolate chip cookies while she supervised Shirley’s visit. “What kind of screening do you do on your employees anyway?”

  Anna shot her mother a shushing look, but Mom was impervious.

  A case of the blushes and knee-shakes interrupted Shirley’s usual implacable calm. “Todd did some digging on EFA, Inc. Looks like it was a front to sell off rejected 20/80 biofuel.” Shirley paused. “Jules found them for us.”

  Anna hadn’t thought she had any chunks of heart left in her chest, but another piece crumbled off and bounced down her left lung to shatter against her liver.