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

by Jamie Farrell

  “She was getting better,” Anna said.

  “She was getting filthy rich.” Shirley’s knee stilled. The floor stopped shaking. “That much money would make anyone better. They found her last night trying to cross into Canada.”

  “Does Brad know?”

  “No idea.”

  There was a banging at the door. Kaci flung herself in. “Hey, sugar. Y’all having a party without me?” She gave Shirley an appraising glance, flicked a friendly finger-wave at Anna’s mom, then plopped down in the nearest empty seat. “You treat her good, you hear me?” she said to Shirley. “Only thing Anna’s ever done wrong is work too hard to take care of herself.”

  “You betcha,” Mom said.

  Shirley stood. “I expect things should wrap up quick with Jules in custody. We’ll call when you’re cleared to come back to work.”

  The thought of going back to work didn’t inspire Anna with the happiness it should’ve.

  The lab was so far away, that crazy place where she’d desperately tried to define herself after her marriage failed.

  Instead, it felt like some mystical, fake place of bad memories.

  Then she remembered meeting Jackson in the parking lot, and the smell of the cookies made her nauseous.

  And that was before Kaci slid a familiar-looking envelope onto the table. “Messenger duty again,” she said with an uncertain smile.

  Anna was teary-eyed before she broke the seal. Mom paused to hover over her shoulder.

  “You want to be alone?” Kaci asked.

  Anna shook her head. What she wanted was to have gone home over Thanksgiving and not come back.

  Would’ve been easier that way. For once, easier sounded better than right.

  The message was simple.

  Anna Grace,

  I will always believe in you.

  Love,

  Jackson

  P.S. Turns out that was Radish snoring. Sorry for—you know.

  Kaci squeezed her hand. “He’s not doing too good, sugar. Misses you a lot. Sad, what with him not moving for at least a couple years.”

  “That’ll make it easier.” Anna swiped at her eyes. “How about I go burn my school books and dedicate my brain to science now? They can figure out what kind of mutant gene makes me want to continually sacrifice my ability to take care of myself by marrying men who only want someone to put their life in order every time they move.”

  “It’s okay to not want him, sugar, but don’t lie to yourself about why.”

  “You love this one?” Mom asked.

  More prickles attacked her eyelids. Her mom still thought Neil might come over for Christmas dinner.

  Wouldn’t that be fun.

  “Doesn’t matter.” Anna dabbed at her nose. “He called OSI on me.”

  “Sugar, he didn’t call on you, he called for you. And I’m right glad he did, because Lance was supposed to be flying that night. I’da had to beat you silly if you let my husband get on a plane with bad fuel.”

  Yeah, Anna hadn’t had any heart palpitations over that the last few nights either.

  “The news last night said the military doesn’t think the fuel would’ve caused long-term problems,” Mom said. “It wasn’t done to bring planes down.”

  Anna wanted to kick her. Kaci’s lips went bloodred against the sudden pale of her face.

  “We don’t put those words in the same sentences around pilots’ wives,” Anna hissed at her mother.

  “Well, it wasn’t,” Mom insisted.

  “I vote we strap her to a firecracker,” Anna grumbled.

  Kaci rubbed some color back into her cheeks. “You gonna blow up all Jackson’s notes?”

  Anna snatched the newest one off the table and shoved it in her pocket.

  Kaci chuckled. “Guess that answers the love question, now doesn’t it?”

  ANNA GOT THE CALL late Sunday that she’d been cleared to go back to work Tuesday, two weeks before Christmas, one week before she was due to leave for home. Jules had confessed and was supposedly working on a plea deal.

  The OSI agent recommended that Anna stay clear of any further contact with her.

  The agent didn’t say anything about Brad though. So Monday afternoon, Anna had a late lunch with him.

  “You sent that guy to beat me up,” Brad said over his boat of sushi.

  “I asked him to do what he would’ve done for a fellow airman.” Anna’s appetite was as nonexistent as it had been following her divorce, but she forced herself to eat some edamame. The salt stung her lips. She liked it. Not as if her lips would feel anything else ever again.

  “I’m gonna try to get custody of the kid,” Brad said. “Got an interview later this week.”

  “So you and Jules…?”

  He didn’t meet her eyes. Couldn’t or wouldn’t, she didn’t know. “Turns out we’ve both got some growing up to do. Don’t think we’re looking for the same things.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  He lifted a massive shoulder. “Shit happens.” His eyes shifted to her, then away again. “She said to tell you she was sorry. She wanted to be able to take care of the baby. When—you know. Because I was a worthless shit for a while there.”

  Back in Minnesota, apologies were met with Aw, it’s okay, you betcha. Here, Anna supposed blessing Jules’s heart would be mild. “As long as you put half as much effort into fatherhood as you did into being a shit, I think you’ll be fine,” Anna said.

  The staff at the small restaurant swished around them, seating other customers and delivering food, while Anna and Brad ate in silence.

  “Appreciate you sending that wake-up call,” Brad said finally.

  “You and Jules were good friends to me and Neil when we got here. I couldn’t not do something.”

  “Your friend did more than Neil would’ve. Don’t think he deserved you.”

  He looked as if he wanted to say more, but Anna brushed it off. “It is what it is.”

  “Think you’ll marry this guy?”

  And now she felt as though the salt had settled in her eyes. “No.” She blinked rapidly.

  “Dude. Might want to talk to somebody about that.”

  Anna sucked back the sad and tilted her head at him. “You still seeing somebody?”

  “Yeah, but he’s not my type. Maybe I should find a girl shrink. Baby’s gonna need a momma. Giggidy.”

  He grinned, and Anna laughed.

  If Brad could go through losing his brother and his wife and survive, she reckoned she could keep trudging too.

  “IF I WERE WRITING your story,” Mamie said, “you’d sacrifice a whole lot more than your dignity to get her back.”

  Jackson thought about dropping the phone down the garbage disposal. “Great plan, Mamie, but sad truth is, she doesn’t want anything from me. Not my help, not my paycheck, not my dignity.”

  Most perfect woman God ever created.

  Except she didn’t want his love either.

  He scrubbed his fork. Hadn’t much felt like eating tonight, but he’d done it anyway. Seemed like something that would’ve been on Anna Grace’s schedule for him.

  “Maybe it’s time you figure out what she needs instead of what she wants.” The sound of pins getting bowled over echoed through the phone.

  “Anything she needs, she goes out and gets for herself.” He dried the fork, then dropped it into his silverware drawer, right in the spot in his silverware holder labeled forks.

  “Maybe she doesn’t know what she needs. Flo, you go on and pass me by. Still gonna kick your hiney even without this frame.” Mamie lowered her voice again. “So tell me, sugarplum, you want to be her hero?”

  He didn’t answer.

  He was too busy trying to piece together how he was supposed to be smarter than Anna Grace to figure out what she didn’t know she needed.

  Conundrum, that’s what it was.

  “If you can’t say yes to that, I reckon you ain’t cut out to be that hero she needs.”

  H
e was thinking she might be right about that. Chapped him in places he didn’t like being chapped. “What’s she need, Mamie?”

  “What do you need?”

  More pins plink-plunked. Jackson felt like the whole bowling alley was lined up in his chest, the old Misses taking shots at knocking down his heart. “I need her to love me back,” he said, sounding as pathetic and unmanly as every man in love he’d ever met.

  “Oh, sugarplum, she does. You trust old Mamie on this one. She does.”

  “Not so sure about that.”

  “Ophelia, this boy ain’t got the sense God gave a plucked rooster when it comes to women. You go on and give him a talkin’ to before he breaks my heart.”

  Jackson went back to the sink of soapy water. Miss O’s deep voice came on the line. “How far’d your mamie get with you, hon?”

  “’Bout run me up the wall talking in riddles.”

  “Alrighty, then, listen on up. Miss O’s gonna tell you a secret.”

  If she gave him her recipe for Miss O’s Magic Mallow-bomb shots, he might have to accidentally on purpose drop his phone in the water. “Hanging on your every word, Miss O.”

  “You want her, you make her number one. Above your dog, above your job, above yourself. You can do that, you’re worthy of her. If not, you don’t love her enough to keep on bothering her. That clear enough for you, honey pie?”

  It was clear.

  He didn’t know whether it helped, but it was clear.

  THE RMC BUILDING was cold. Not heater-not-running-right cold. With the unseasonably warm December, the heater wasn’t necessary.

  It was more like an unwelcome chilly, and Anna couldn’t tell where the chill was coming from.

  Could’ve been the odd looks that she may or may not have imagined from her coworkers as she walked to Shirley’s office at 7:56 A.M.

  Could’ve been the steel-blue walls, walls that two weeks ago had been a warm, welcoming shade that soothed Anna’s soul but today threatened to suck her joy meter empty.

  Or it could’ve been fear.

  Plain, simple fear that no matter what she did, no matter how hard she worked on this contract, the government might terminate her own contract in as few as three short months.

  What incentive would RMC have to find her a new position in the company?

  What incentive would Corporate have to keep this branch open?

  How would she finish her damn degree and get a stupid technical job then?

  “Get on in here,” Shirley said from her doorway. “Got a lot of work to do, and not enough lifetimes to do it in.”

  Anna followed her into the office and took a seat on the edge of a prettier-than-it-was-comfortable guest chair. She pulled her cardigan tighter around herself.

  “Congratulations, you’re our new lead analyst. Gonna have to stay in school, have to continue with the certification series, but Corporate’s approved your promotion.” Shirley dumped a stack of papers at the edge of her desk. “All the resumes from the last six months. Pick out four or five you like, and we’ll interview them for your assistant.”

  “My—wait, what?”

  “Assistant. We need somebody to do your old job when you take over the vacant analyst position.”

  It was stupid, immature, and really, really stupid, but Anna’s chin trembled.

  Then her core quaked, a rumble that emanated from her midsection and bounced through her chest like Rex’s motherboard on a Monday morning.

  “There a problem?” Shirley said.

  Anna licked her lips.

  Of course there wasn’t a problem. “A promotion?”

  “With a pay raise. A big one.”

  A pay raise. Comfort. Temporarily more security.

  But—God, this was stupid—but—“Will I still do the filing?”

  Shirley peered at her.

  She pulled her glasses off, wiped them, pushed them back up her long nose, and peered harder. “No,” she said, enunciating the word so Anna heard at least six letters and eight syllables of highly uncomplimentary opinions aimed toward her person.

  But it didn’t matter, because she was being offered a promotion. She’d proved her technical worth and her loyalty to the company, and she was in a position to convince the customer that she ran a lab as sound and smooth as the best damn lab analysts in the entire country. The experience would look fabulous on her resume after she finished her degree and started job-hunting. This was a gift from the heavens, a karmic high-five for all that she’d endured since the moment she set foot in the great state of Georgia. And she was honored to have the opportunity to serve her country while she taught someone else—someone fresh and green and eager—how to keep the paperwork of a laboratory in good working order.

  She was the luckiest woman on the face of the professional and technical worlds.

  And she would tell Shirley so as soon as she could get oxygen past that red remove before flight tab blocking the flow of air through her throat.

  “You do want the job,” Shirley said.

  Anna’s lungs and nose and air passages snapped back into rhythm.

  She forced an overly bright smile, nodded, opened her mouth, and said—

  “I quit.”

  Shirley blinked.

  So did Anna.

  And then she gasped, felt her eyelids stretch so wide her eyeballs bulged and her vision crossed. She ordered her tongue to take the words back, to correct that erroneous statement.

  It came out stronger. “I. Quit.”

  And instead of feeling the earth quake and tremble beneath her, instead of being struck down by a sucker punch of God’s laughter delivered through a lightning bolt, instead of imploding with a panic attack of epic proportions, Anna closed her eyes, inhaled the stale office air twinged with a hint of Shirley’s pre-workday smoke, and smiled a real smile.

  Her chest expanded, free and clear and free, wide-open to a new world of possibilities.

  “Oh my God,” Anna said on a laugh. “I really do. I quit.”

  Quit the job, quit the expectations, quit feeling the weight of everyone else’s disappointments in her failures.

  “You have lost your ever-loving mind,” Shirley said.

  But there was something else there.

  Admiration.

  A tad bit of jealousy.

  And, yeah, a lot of this one’s gone loony too, but it was beneath the good stuff.

  “You bet your ketchup-drenched fried Twinkies I have,” Anna said.

  She grinned wider and laughed again.

  She was free.

  FREEDOM, IT TURNED OUT, didn’t come with a recipe for biscuits.

  But Kaci was happy to share her momma’s recipe, her tub of bacon grease, and her old cast-iron skillet, along with an offer to blow up Anna’s separation paperwork whenever RMC got around to delivering it.

  And the bills for those classes she’d taken.

  But she’d refused alimony from Neil in exchange for their modest savings, so all was not lost.

  She flashed a wide grin at the mess on her countertop. Bowls and spoons and pans littered the dirty surface. She slid on spilled flour, but she didn’t stop to wipe it up. She had better things to do than clean her kitchen.

  As soon as that timer dinged.

  Someone knocked on her door.

  Banged, really. Repeatedly.

  Probably her landlord to kick her out after he found out she’d quit her job.

  She eyed the timer. Forty-five seconds. She’d give the landlord her notice, and then she’d get on with getting on with her life.

  She hoped.

  One way or another, she wouldn’t be staying here.

  But it wasn’t her landlord on the other side of the door. Her heart launched a thousand butterflies into her chest. “Oh!”

  “Anna. Don’t go.” Jackson was disheveled, his uniform blouse crooked, his eyes wide and pleading. He touched a finger to her lips. “Listen a minute, okay?”

  This wasn’t the plan. She was suppo
sed to find him.

  But she was working on being flexible, so she nodded, all those butterflies in her chest making her ribs tingle like her lips beneath his finger.

  “I owe Uncle Sam about another year and a half. Always figured I’d retire nine years on and then get to figuring out what I want to be when I grow up. But the last few months, I’ve been what I want to be, I just didn’t know it. But I know now. I want to be yours.”

  The oven timer beeped. Anna tried to pull in a breath, but those butterflies were tickling her lungs. Her eyes went misty.

  “I love you, Anna Grace,” Jackson said. “You wanna go to Iceland, I’ll go to Iceland. Darlin’, I’d go live in an igloo if it’s what makes you happy. You go on and tell me what you want, and I’m gonna go on and do it.”

  A whimpery laugh slipped through her lips.

  Wonderful man.

  Crazy, wonderful, perfect man.

  The oven timer beeped again. “I quit my job,” she said.

  Confusion skittered over his features. “Kaci said you got—” He stopped. His jaw went slack. “Son of a biscuit. She got me good.”

  Anna’s breath hitched. If he couldn’t play hero, did he still want her?

  A familiar old grin flashed. “We’ll find you a new one. A better one. Whatever you want to do, we’ll make it work for you. Just don’t go.” He engulfed her in a full body hug, stroking her arms, her back, rubbing his jaw in her hair. “Don’t leave me, Anna Grace. You and me, we’re just getting started. Thirty years from now, I want to be rocking on our front porch with you, watching our grandbabies, smelling that fancy shampoo you like to use, laughing and talking and loving you.”

  “Grandbabies?”

  “Babies and grandbabies and great grandbabies. And I’ll buy you enough label makers that you can stamp labels on every single one of them.”

  Oh.

  Oh, yes.

  He was worth every painful moment of this year. Every moment of her first time as an Air Force wife.

  Every moment of her life.

  “You need to stop talking,” she said, “before you make me burn your biscuits.”

  His eyebrows knit together. He sniffed the air. “Biscuits?”