“Where’s your car?” I asked him then, scanning the parking lot, not wanting to think about why he was here at this time of night. Goddamn limping horse.
“Walked,” he explained, still watching me. His eyelids were hooded and his voice just this side of slurry.
“All the way from your uncle’s?” I snapped at him.
“From Eddie’s,” he clarified. “Left the car there.”
I stared at him for a long moment before deciding abruptly that action was the best thing here. I spun around to unearth the hidden key; my hand was oddly shaky and I had to try two times before I inserted it correctly into the lock. Once within the dark interior of Shore Leave I ignored my jumping innards, my unease at dealing with my sodden husband on a night when I shouldn’t have been seeing his face at all. Damn him, he was doing this on purpose to torture me. I fumbled in my purse, which was stuffed under the counter, finally locating my car keys. From across the café the screen door creaked open and Jackson was coming through it. I hadn’t bothered to click on any lights, and he called, low, “Jo?”
“Over here,” I told him. “Getting the keys to get your drunk ass home.”
“Not yet,” he said, now headed my way, though rather slowly. I was struck again with discomforting familiarity; how many times in our past had we met in this very same place on hot summer nights, under cover of darkness, finding any excuse to make love? He’d bent me over the counter on more than one occasion.
Jackson leaned over that same counter on his elbows and grinned wickedly at me, looking too much like the teenage boy I’d just been trying to banish from my mind. I gripped the keys tight in my right hand and ordered, “Let’s go.”
“Let’s not,” he whispered. He reached and closed his fingers around my wrist, loosely, but when I tugged impatiently he kept hold.
I hissed, “Stop it, Jackson, I mean it.”
“Come here,” he said, and I yanked hard then, freeing my arm. He cajoled, “Jo, come on.”
“No,” I told him, my voice firm. I was so angry that he was behaving this way that I could have decked him. I moved around the counter but he followed, cornering me and this time slipping his arms around my waist, cupping my hips and drawing me flush against him. Before I could react he bent his head, sending the sharp scent of bourbon rolling over my face.
“Jackson!” I yelped, and shoved him hard in the chest. “Stop it! What in the hell are you trying to do?”
He stumbled back and regarded me as though through a haze, his eyes unfocused even in the darkness. He was more shitfaced than I’d realized, and I relented, shifting position and hooking his arm over my shoulders. He leaned heavily against me, reeking of booze, and I ordered, “Come on, you can crash on the couch.”
“Can’t,” he murmured, and suddenly his knees seemed to liquefy. With alarm, I realized he had passed out.
I grunted with the effort of keeping him upright, but then gave up and just sank to the floor, bringing him with. He was like a cooked noodle, flat on his back before I could help it. From a kneeling position I studied his familiar profile in the dimness with something close to stun, trying to make sense of what he was doing here. What it meant.
“Shit, shit, shit,” I muttered. Now what? I couldn’t possibly haul him across the lake path to the house. Nor could I wake Mom or Ellen to help me.
At that moment headlights beamed across the windows, flashing over me like a lighthouse beacon. Justin and Jilly, thank God. I darted out the screen door and waved at them. Jilly bounded out of the truck as soon as they parked and called, “Jo, what are you still doing up?”
“I need your help,” I informed them. “I killed Jackson and need to dispose of his body.”
Justin laughed heartily from behind my sister. Moments later they had joined me on the porch and I insisted, “Come and see for yourselves if you don’t believe me.”
Inside Shore Leave Jilly clicked on the lights, making us all abruptly squint, and said, “Well shit. It’s true.”
Jackson was horizontal on the floor beside the row of stools along the counter, his chin pointed at the ceiling, feet flopped outward. He might have been dead but for the rip-sawing snores that were making his chest tremble at intervals. I shook my head, suddenly exhausted, as Justin asked, “What in the hell?”
“He showed up here drunk just before you guys got back,” I explained. “Drunk as shit.”
“Where’s his car?” Justin asked.
I thumbed in the general direction of Eddie’s, while Justin and I continued staring at my husband. Jillian, however, had trained her suspicious gaze upon me.
“The bastard,” she muttered then. “He tried to kiss you, didn’t he?”
I squirmed and finally admitted, “He tried, but I shoved him away.”
“That effing limper,” she went on. Justin shot her an odd look, though I understood her words. “He’s doing this because he’s a big jealous baby, that’s what. He can’t handle that you found someone new.”
“Pretty much,” I agreed. I knew that’s what had motivated this bullshit, more than anything.
“Well I say let him sleep right there tonight,” Justin suggested. I looked back at him; from a particular angle his livid facial scars weren’t even visible, though the longer I’d been around him this summer, the less I noticed them at all. “He’ll pay for it in the morning.”
“Yeah, but what if the girls find him?” Jilly asked. “Or Mom? Christ, we’d hear about it for weeks.”
I giggled a little, and then reflected, “Gran would just step over him and start the coffee.”
Jilly giggled too. “But she’d be sure to poke him with her cane a few times. Not hard, just enough to bust a rib or two.”
“Fine, he can come home with me,” Justin grumbled. “Help me load him up.”
Anyone watching would have assumed we actually were disposing of a body; Justin hooked his arms under Jackson’s torso and hefted him up, while Jilly and I each snagged a leg. He was inert between us as we hauled him, haltingly, across the parking lot and then with great difficulty into the passenger seat of Justin’s truck. For a moment he came to, his gaze catching hold of me, and he murmured, “Night, Jo, love you,” before his eyes rolled back in his head.
I froze for a moment, unduly troubled by that statement. Jillian slammed the door, effectively cutting off my thoughts. She said, “Come on, let’s get to bed. You have a long drive tomorrow.”
And I let her lead me home.
Chapter Two
Morning dawned thick and silver with cloud cover. I bent over each of my girls in their beds in turn, cupping their cheeks and kissing them, assuring them that I’d call, that I’d be back soon. Before they knew it.
Jilly was the only one fully awake, bundled in her quilted pink robe, a travel mug of coffee in hand. She had brewed it for me in her kitchen, and I clung to her for a long moment under the heavy, early morning sky. She kissed me and whispered, “Bring him back.”
“I will, and I’ll call every night,” I whispered against her hair.
I climbed into my loaded car, turned the key. A few drops of rain smattered over the windshield as I rolled down the window with a touch of a button and reached out to my sister. She clutched my hand extra hard for a moment. Thus fortified, I pulled from the parking lot, slowly, then around the lake and back through Landon, before turning out onto the main highway, heading for Interstate 35.
By midmorning I had cleared Minnesota and entered Iowa under a clear blue bowl of sky. I’d hauled along a carry case jammed with my favorite CDs, and was listening currently to Bon Jovi, the old stuff, the music from my youth. I kept the windows down, despite my speed, my heart unsettled by the emotions mixing together under my breastbone. Exhilaration and terror, mostly, but a ribbon of pure thrill wound through me, too, at the fact that I was doing something like this. Going after what I wanted for myself, instead of sitting by and letting life happen to me. I felt alive, in a way that I hadn’t in over a decade.
/> Blythe, Blythe, don’t be angry that I’m coming, I thought, my breath catching a little at just the thought of my lover. Come back with me, we’ll make it work. Somehow, we’ll make it work. I couldn’t bear the thought of the alternative.
The interstate hummed beneath the tires as I drove south past mile upon mile of rolling green hills and cornfields a month from harvest. Driving solo had always been something, for me, that invited reflection, and my thoughts spun back to the nights in Blythe’s truck, sneaking away into the darkness to find a few hours alone. I revisited the night we’d met, playing over that moment again. I’d just arrived at Shore Leave from Chicago, kids in tow, to discover that my mother had hired an ex-con. Angry, exhausted and emotionally drained, I’d walked into the café that night expecting…well, certainly not the future love of my life.
I’d been almost too shy to shake his hand. And afterward, during those first few weeks, I’d tried so hard to ignore my feelings for him, but it had been useless, out of my hands. My initial and intense attraction had been slowly replaced by something more. The last thing on earth I’d been expecting was to fall in love. But then, that’s the way of it…
I’d believed myself in love once before, totally under the spell of Jackson Gordon’s smile. It still rankled me this morning that he could so casually, in last night’s drunken state, speak any words of love to me. The man who’d told me just a month ago that he was in love with another woman and wanted to marry her. The man I’d fallen out of love with long ago (though it took almost equally as long to realize it), when our marriage began to wither on the vine. To be fair, when I was a teenage girl Jackson had been my ideal: charming, sexy, tan and lanky, never wearing a shirt during our long hot summers on the lake. He’d been a fan of wearing his neon-tinted sunglasses pushed back on his head, squinting into the sun, his toothy grin constantly flashing. He’d teased me all the time, untying my bikini top, slipping his hands over my stomach, always ready to make love, and in those days I had been always willing.
I bit my bottom lip now, all these years later, remembering the morning I’d realized I was pregnant and that I must tell Jackie. How abruptly our virtually carefree relationship came screeching and grinding to a halt.
“Pregnant?” he’d repeated on that spring afternoon, May 1985, roughly three weeks after our senior prom.
I nodded, my insides shaking and heaving with tension, though I’d held it together reasonably well on the outside. We’d been sitting on the arbor swing in his parent’s big shady yard, alone but for the lazy spring sunlight and about a million birds, Jackie keeping the swing in motion with an idle foot. When I revealed my news, he’d stopped it with a jolt. His eyes were dark and serious on mine. But despite everything he’d taken my right hand between both of his.
“Are you sure, Jo? You did a pee test and everything?”
“Yes, and yes I’m sure,” I said, desperately willing away the ocean of frightened sobs that kept threatening to hurricane through my body. “Oh, Jackie, Mom will kill me. She’ll murder me. She’s warned me about this for so long.”
And he’d smiled, a little hint of his grin, and teased, “Warned you about me?”
I glared at him for trying to make a joke of it at this moment, and his grin had slipped away. He said, “Tell Ellen first, for sure. She’ll help make your mom understand.”
“What about your parents?” I’d worried. They were both pretty uptight for having such a wild only child.
“We’ll tell them. It’ll be okay, Jo,” he’d said back then. And I’d believed him.
Our wedding was just a month and a half later, after our high school graduation, and I’d been too ill with morning sickness to do any real celebrating. Mom had been furious with me (though she hid that fact in front of anyone), Jilly heartbroken, Gran, Great-Aunt Minnie (who’d still been around in those days dishing out both fried fish and heaps of advice) and Aunt Ellen resigned. Gran had attempted on two occasions to talk me out of marrying Jackie. They were all sick at the idea of me moving all the way to Chicago, but at the time it had made sense; Jackson was already accepted into college and I could stay home with the baby. Which I did, and then again, and finally for a third time.
“Dammit, Jackson,” I murmured now, blinking behind my huge sunglasses into the bright sun of an Iowa morning, over 18 years later. Why hadn’t I listened to my gran? But that was a pointless question, and besides, without having moved to Chicago I wouldn’t have had either Tish or Ruthann, the lights of my life. My trio of girls was the best thing I’d ever put out into the world, and in any case, I’d always have wondered about Jackson had he gone off to college and left me behind. Better to have experienced the failure than be constantly second-guessing.
I need a smoke, I thought, groping for my purse to find the pack Jilly had stashed there for me. I extracted one and then used the same hand to push in the car lighter. After this trip, no more. Totally done smoking.
I drove for another hour before pulling into a Standard station to refuel. Again I spent a moment marveling at this trip I was making, alone. Five years ago I wouldn’t have considered such a thing. Even six months ago. But Jackson had been right when he’d noticed how I had changed this summer. I had found myself again, picking up the scraps that had scattered all apart during the past difficult years, reemerging as the Joelle I used to know, the one who’d been tucked deep in my heart. But stronger now, and wiser. This time understanding what love was all about. I rolled my eyes at myself and then couldn’t help but hum the Madonna song with the same phrasing. But it was true…and I had to act on that love or else I would never know what might have been. And that was a what if I refused to live with.
Blythe, Blythe, just wait. I was so wrong to drive you away. Please be glad I’m coming for you, please don’t think you’re not worth it. My sweet man, you’re so worth it, so worth everything.
Fifteen hours of driving was what we’d estimated. I would be coming up on Missouri by early afternoon, and intended to be in Brandt, Oklahoma, Blythe’s hometown, by about 10:00 this evening. By 7:00 I was roughly 50 miles from the Oklahoma state line, and my nervous energy had about put me over the edge. My entire pack of smokes was gone, my hands were on a slight tremble, and I made a sudden decision to stay the night in Wichita. It was vanity more than anything that motivated it; I couldn’t bear to confront Blythe reeking of cigarettes and with shadows under my eyes. What’s more, he didn’t even know I was on the way.
In a small, tidy room at a Comfort Inn I stood under a jet of just-shy-of-scalding water, bracing my hands on the shower tiles and letting the anxiety seep down the drain along with the travel dust. Afterward I coated myself with peach-scented lotion, trying not to think about how much Blythe loved the scent on my skin, snuggled into my robe and twisted my hair into a single clip on the back of my head. Slightly calmer now, I carried my cell phone to the small balcony outside my third-floor room and sank onto a plastic patio chair whose turquoise hue suggested Miami Beach.
The Kansas sky was clear and wide and rosy-tinted with the first hints of sunset as I called Shore Leave. Gran answered after three rings with her unmistakable “Hel-lo,” lots of accent on the first syllable. It was more of a demand than a greeting and I said, “Hey there,” and drew a deep breath.
“Joelle, where are you?” she asked. It was Sunday, so the café would be relatively quiet. I imagined Gran leaning over the front counter with its toothpick dispenser and ancient till that tinged a cheerful bell with every sale.
“Wichita,” I said. “I decided to stop for the night. I’m exhausted.”
“Rich called today and talked to Joanie for an hour or so,” Gran informed. “She told him you were on the way.”
My heart clattered hard. I whispered, “What did he say?”
“He wasn’t surprised. He promised not to tell Blythe until you were already there.”
My heart was aching at how close I was to him, to Blythe. It had only been a few days since I’d seen him, but it fe
lt immeasurably longer. And we’d parted with such uncertainty. I finally said, “I’m glad Rich understands. And I’m so nervous to meet Christy.”
“Aw, she’s a sweet girl, and understanding,” Gran reassured. “And it’s not as though you forced her boy into something unwilling.” She squawked a laugh. “Ain’t that right?”
My face flooded with heat. I said, “Gran, come on.”
“Here’s Camille,” Gran said then, and a second later my oldest’s voice was coming over the line. It always startled me to hear my children’s voices over the phone; they sounded too grown-up.
“Hi, honey,” I said. “How are you feeling today?”
“Ugh, not great,” Camille responded. Away from the phone she added, “Thanks, Gran,” and then I heard her taking a long sip of something. “7-UP,” she explained. “Why don’t they tell you that morning sickness has nothing to do with mornings? It’s all day, Mom, seriously.”
I laughed. “I remember. But it goes away from one night to the next and then you’ll just be starving.”
“When is that?”
“I’d say for you, in about three or four weeks. Try some saltines.”
“I did,” she said, sounding pitiful. “No help. Clint and Tish just drove the golf cart into town to get me strawberry yogurt. It’s the only thing that has sounded remotely good today. At least there hasn’t been the fried fish smell all day.”
“Oh honey,” I empathized. “I was just like that too. But I promise you’ll feel better in a few weeks.”
“Okay,” she agreed. And then, “Here’s Ruthie. Love you, Mom.”
I blew her a kiss and then my youngest chirped, “Hi, Mom!”
“Hi there,” I responded. “Did you have a fun day? What’s Aunt Jilly doing?”
“She’s out with Justin,” Ruth told me. “They took out the paddle boat after Justin got done with work.”
She chatted about the rest of her day, and before she hung up I requested, “Honey, have Aunt Jilly call me later, all right? And say ‘hi’ to Tish and everybody.”
Second Chances Page 4