Finding Forever

by Linda Oaks

  “Who told you?” she asked, her tone sharp. “I know it wasn’t Devon.” I looked over at her, and she turned on her signal taking a right onto Sycamore Street. Mavis lived in the third house on the left. When we finally stopped in her driveway, she was staring at me waiting for an answer.

  With a tired sigh, I rubbed my forehead. I was starting to get a headache. “How do you know it wasn’t Devon?” I asked her, and she snorted. Her expression was almost comical.

  She flicked the remains of her cigarette out the window gaping at me. “Because that man is crazy about you. He’s not going to say or do anything to drive you away this time.”

  Oh, but she was so wrong because here I sat at almost four in the morning with Mavis in her car sitting in her driveway. If Devon were as crazy about me as Mavis thought, then he would have taken the time in the past few days to have said so. Silence spoke louder than any words, and I heard his message loud and clear. I needed to accept that.

  “I’ve got one word for you, Mavis… Blair.” I retorted, and then I opened my door and grabbed the suitcase from the back without waiting for her to reply. She was out of the car and around to my side in two seconds flat.

  “Now you listen to me—” She began pointing her finger, and I held up my hand nudging the door shut with my suitcase.

  “He said nothing to me, Mavis. In all the time I’ve spent with him. Nothing. He doesn’t love me, and he never will, especially after what I learned tonight from Blair. How could he?” Angry, fat tears rolled down my cheeks, and I walked past her heading for the house. It was hopeless.

  She came up behind me, slipped the key in the lock, and opened the front door. “I think you’re wrong,” she said, but I didn’t feel like arguing with her. I left my suitcase by the door and slipped off my flip-flops before heading straight for Mavis’s couch.

  She walked over and sat down beside me. I grabbed a tissue from the box sitting on the coffee table and began wiping away the wetness on my cheeks. I didn’t think I could cry anymore. I should have been all cried out by now. “You need to talk to Devon before you up and leave.” Her gaze held mine, her brown eyes studying my face behind the thick lens of her glasses. Her hand covered mine. “What’s happened to you, Kara? You’ve been a mess ever since you came back home.”

  I shrugged, my lips curving down in a frown. “I don’t know. I love him, Mavis,” I stated, and begun to cry once again. The couch dipped. Arms wrapped around me. The smell of BENGAY assaulted my nose, but I leaned against her anyway letting her hold me.

  Her warm breath ruffled my hair. “Well if you love him, you stay and you fight for him. He must be your kind of crazy since you’ve carried a torch for him for years. You don’t just hand him over on a silver platter to some other woman, especially a woman like Blair. That dish was served a long time ago and sent back to the kitchen lacking. He doesn’t want her. He wants you.”

  I shook my head in denial, the soft chenille of Mavis’s robe brushed against my cheek. “If he wanted me, then he would have said something. He would have asked me to stay. How could he ever want anything to do with me now? My father destroyed any chance I may have had with Devon four years ago.”

  “You are not your father, Kara or his mistakes,” Mavis replied, and I pulled away staring back at her.

  “Devon turned me away once. It’s better this way. This time I’m the one leaving instead of the one being sent away.”

  Mavis settled back against the couch, her body angled toward mine. She crossed her arms over her ample chest glaring at me. “Well if that’s what you think,” she said, her lips turned down into frown making her face even more wrinkled. “You’re right,” she agreed, staring at the door. Her lips curved into a smile. My mouth fell open at her words.

  Was she just messing with me? Wasn’t she just trying to talk me out of this? Now she thinks she should agree with me leaving? I wasn’t falling for her any of her reverse crap mojo jojo. She may be slick, but I was well aware as to how Mavis Davies operated. She wasn’t fooling anyone.

  “I know what you’re doing. It’s not going to work. He had every chance to tell me how he felt. I’m leaving tonight, so let’s just drop this,” I snapped, glaring at her. She pissed me off. I’d made up my mind. No more second-guessing myself.

  “All right,” I heard her reply in defeat. She glanced at the clock on the wall and groaned. “I guess I better start getting ready for work. I have to open this morning at six. Just remember that sometimes it’s hard for people to express how they feel. I’m surprised Devon turned out as well as he did with that crazy ass Clyde raising him. That one is stone cold.”

  I ignored her. She just wasn’t going to give up, but my mind buzzed with all of the questions that I wanted to ask her. Questions, I was sure she had the answers too. “Mavis, wait.” I called.

  “What is it, Kara?” She asked then yawned. She stood a few feet away in the middle of the room staring back at me.

  “Will you please tell me about my father?’

  Her eyes narrowed, shooting sparks. “I’d rather not,” she said, making a face like she’d swallowed something bitter.

  “Please, Mavis,” I pleaded. I hated to beg, but if it were left up to my momma, I’d never know. “Everyone in this town already knows more than me. I just want answers, Mavis. I want to go back to the city and live my life without my past always haunting me. My father is a part of my past. He’s shaped my future by leaving my momma and me and hurting the man that I love. I want to put all of this behind me. Surely, you can understand. Please, Mavis.” I begged.

  Her expression softened. “I wished your momma had been the one to have told you this. You are so much like her, Kara. You just don’t realize it.” She sighed, walking to the couch and taking a seat. I propped my chin in my hand and adjusted my legs. I sat with my legs crossed looking at her and waiting. “Remember that you asked for this,” she said, and I nodded anxious for her to continue.

  “When your mom met Jack, he dazzled her. All this attention, flowers, gifts… you name it. He doted on her and ended up stealing her away from Clyde. Well, Clyde had his head up his ass anyway, and if you snooze, you lose.” Her big eyes glared at me. “You remember that missy before you hightail it back to the city,” she warned, pointing a finger at me. I rolled my eyes, biting my tongue and remained quiet.

  “Then Jack caught her. What a whirlwind. The next thing I knew she was pregnant with you, and had you a couple months after we graduated high school. By then, Jack had made her Mrs. Thorn. I never liked Jack. He ran with a rough crowd. He liked to party, and since your mom wasn’t so footloose and fancy free anymore, he started in with the other women. Didn’t surprise me any. Summer knew, but she refused to admit it. That whole idea of the white picket fence with the little house bullshit made her turn a blind eye.” Mavis shook her head. Her expression weary.

  “Then it went from bad to worse, and wasn’t long until it got downright ugly. Jack didn’t like being backed into a corner. One too many times of the ‘little woman’ constantly bitching when he came home drunk and stinking to high heaven of some other woman’s perfume. When he blackened your momma’s eye, it was the last straw.”

  I gasped, and an evil smile curled her lips.

  “Clyde went after him.”

  “I hope Clyde beat the shit out of him,” I said, imaging my beautiful momma walking around with a black eye. How a man could lay hands on a woman in anger baffled me.

  “He rung his clock and knocked his ass into next week. Then Jack took off like a bat out of hell. I hadn’t seen him since. Well, until four months before your young man had his accident. He came back around trying to bum money from your mom and harassing her. He ran her off the road one morning on her way to work.”

  “What?” I screeched, my heart pounding. Momma hadn’t said a thing.

  “Devon drove by and saw them. Jack was all up in your momma’s face. Devon turned around, came back, and helped your mom. After
that, Jack disappeared. Then a couple months later, he turned up again. Apparently Devon had been paying him money to stay away after he found out Jack had been harassing her and then for some reason quit. Jack came back to town mad as a wet hen. You know the rest,” she said, reaching for the ashtray on the table and the pack of cigarettes lying beside it. She lit her cigarette, drawing in a deep breath staring back at me.

  “He hit Devon,” I said, and she nodded, exhaling a long stream of gray smoke.

  “It was an accident,” I said, even though it sounded like a question. Mavis arched her eyebrows at me.

  “If it was an accident child, he wouldn’t be locked up at the Hurley County Penitentiary.”

  My stomach churned. Had my own father tried to kill the man that I loved?

  While Mavis got ready for work, I checked my phone. There was a text from Devon. He wanted to know where I was, but I didn’t answer him. What was the point in it anyway? We were through. That bridge had been burnt out on highway one-eighty-four years earlier, and my father had held the matches.

  The clock on the wall read a little after five, so I stretched out on the lumpy couch trying to make sense of what Mavis had just told me. Poor little Kara with her head stuck in the sand. Blair was right to mock me. I was a joke. With fifteen minutes to spare, Mavis came back down the hall and into the living room dressed and ready for work. She lifted the red smock over her head, tying it around her thick waist while looking at me. “What are you going to do, Kara?” She asked, her voice quiet and calm. I sat up and placed my feet on the floor. I didn’t have much time.

  “Can I borrow your car?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  AS I DROVE, MY MIND wandered, drifting from thoughts of Devon to my childhood and the years I’d spent struggling to come to terms with the absence of my father. It hadn’t been a picnic, especially being nine and wanting to attend the father/daughter dance at school, but not having a father to go with you. Sure, Addie had offered for me to tag along with her and her dad, but it wasn’t the same. I’d stayed home and cried myself to sleep that night after my momma had gone to bed. I hadn’t wanted to upset her.

  A father was the man by whom I was supposed to judge every other man in my life. He set the standard, and by the time Clyde had started stepping up and paying real attention to my momma, it’d been too late. I’d always thought they were just friends. Anyway, I’d been already half grown. The years of wondering why I wasn’t like everyone else had left its mark on me. What was wrong with me? Why couldn’t my own father love me?

  All the times I’d spent at Addie’s house before Natalie had died, that was what a real family should have felt like. I’d been so envious of her. My mom, with her sunny smile and golden hair, had always been there for me trying to take up the slack and make up for the fact that I’d grown up without a father; the man whose DNA I shared that had chosen to abandon us.

  There were no memories of him. Every holiday, birthday, or special occasion, I waited thinking this would be the one where my father would return and swoop my mom and me into his arms, spouting some perfectly reasonable explanation as to why he’d stayed away so long. I had a pretty active imagination. He was a spy for the government. He’d been held captive — a prisoner of war. Yeah, right. He was just another bum who didn’t want the responsibility of the family he’d helped create.

  When one grows up feeling guilty because their own father doesn’t want anything to do with them, it leaves a scar. One that I’d buried underneath the layers of self- protection I’d been piling on for years. I hid it behind witty jokes, smartass comments, and a sunny disposition that had been engrained into me by Momma at an early age. I smiled even when I didn’t feel like smiling. The smartass… I guess that came from Mavis, or, maybe, it was just natural — a talent. Who knew?

  No matter how rough things had gotten, Momma had always been a ray of sunshine. I’d convinced myself I would be smarter. I would do better. The man I fell in love with would want me more than his next breath. He would be my knight and I his princess. He would slay all of my dragons.

  When I’d asked momma about my dad, she’d always told me we were better off without him… never really explaining. From what I’d learned today from Mavis, I’d knew she’d been right, but still there was that nagging, empty feeling I’d carried around most of my life that something was missing. I’d always been fearful of being the one left behind or rejected. I’d always felt a little lost. I guess that’s why I sucked at relationships.

  When I’d finally fallen for Devon, I’d been convinced he was the one. His persistence had paid off. He’d eventually won my heart. He was everything that I’d ever wanted in a man — strong, kind, and gentle, but his communication skills seriously sucked. They still did, but no one was perfect.

  I was tired.

  Tired of everyone hiding everything from me while thinking it was for my own good.

  Tired of beating myself up emotionally.

  Tired of having my heart hanging in limbo for some unattainable fantasy I’d imagined for myself so many years ago. I’d moved to the city for a reason. It was past time for me to let go. I didn’t want to carry this baggage around any longer. I was leaving it here behind me.

  Drawing in a deep breath, I parked Mavis’s Cadillac in the visitor’s parking lot trying not to think about all of the rows of fencing and barbwire. I didn’t plan to stay long and walked quickly toward the entrance of the intimidating brick building filled with a purpose and a rage I’d never felt before. It was directed at the man whom I’d blamed for everything bad that had ever happened in my life… my father.

  Stepping into a lobby, my gaze landed on a guard who motioned me forward. Pulling out my identification, I signed my name on the clipboard and then passed through the metal detector, absent my car keys. The guard smiled at me, dropping the keys into the bin under the desk. “You can pick those up when you leave,” he explained, shooting me a cocky grin and a wink at my look of apparent confusion.

  I’d never been inside of a prison before. That smug smile of his may have worked on other women, but not on me. He was cute, but so not my type since I was seriously considering swearing off men in general. The idea of owning a cat was starting to appeal to me. A cute little kitten for company. It would be easier than having to deal with a man.

  Ahead was another window and another guard. Behind that window, I could see yet another steel gate. She pointed at the clipboard with a pen, drawing my attention to the line, I signed my name along with my father’s in the column next to mine. My stomach suddenly heaved at the thought of finally seeing him in person.

  He was a stranger, and the pictures my mom had of him were from when he’d been younger. A lot could change in twenty-three years. I wasn’t sure I’d even recognize him, and I had no clue as to what I planned to say to him when we finally met. My mind was blank. My hands were sweating, and I wiped them down my jeans, trying to listen to the female guard explain the visiting procedure to me in a no nonsense tone.

  She’d instructed me that I would be escorted into another lobby where I’d wait for my father to be brought in. There would be a desk with a phone where we could speak to one another. No physical contact, she’d stressed. I’d nodded in understanding and gave her a half-smile before I turned to take a seat and wait for my name to be called. At least I’d managed to arrive on one of the days that visitors were allowed.

  Glancing at the clock on the wall, I had at least another hour wait before visiting hours finally began. The sign on the wall stated the days and the hours of nine to twelve. The place was so bland and sterile. I stifled a yawn, glad that I’d stopped for gas and a bite to eat once I’d arrived in Hurley. Fidgeting, I wished I’d had my phone, but it was locked up in Mavis’s caddy since the sign posted outside had stated no cellphones allowed.

  When my name was finally announced, I stood feeling slightly stiff. The chairs were so uncomfortable. There were eight other men and six women w
ho also stood in a line with me. We all were waiting for instructions from the guard standing in front of us. He turned and punched a code into a panel beside a door before it slid open. He instructed us to follow another guard who stood inside the room waiting. There were so many rules, and when the door closed behind us, the sensation of being trapped almost made me panic.

  Everyone was walking over to take a seat at the desks that lined the middle of the room. Behind the glass, I could see an identical desk also on the other side and steel bars at another entrance leading somewhere else inside the prison. I took a deep breath, nervously tapping my fingers against the desk I’d sat down at. The orange juice I’d managed to drink earlier burned like acid in my stomach. I shouldn’t have eaten. It was a mistake to have come here. I don’t know what I’d been thinking. This was stupid. I was leaving.

  About the time I stood to leave, I saw him. The guards were bringing the inmates into the room. Everyone and everything blurred as my gaze focused entirely on him. It was him. It had to be. His hair was blond, the color of mine, but the beard covering the lower half of his face was gray with streaks of white. He resembled his picture. He was tall, muscular, and wore an orange prison-issued jumpsuit. His hands were cuffed in front of him. His forearms covered in faded tattoos.

  When his blue eyes met mine, the breath stilled in my lungs. His eyes slightly widened then narrowed. He didn’t smile. Wrinkles lined his face. He sat down in the seat opposite mine glaring at me from behind the glass, I didn’t move. I didn’t think I could. My heart beat wildly within my chest, feeling as trapped as I was beneath his blue gaze.

  He reached for the phone and his movement prompted me to turn and take the identical one that hung beside me on the wall. I swallowed nervously and placed it to my ear at the same time he did. I could hear him breathing. My tongue felt thick. It stuck to the roof of my mouth. I couldn’t speak. There were so many emotions bombarding me at once. A tear slipped down my cheek.