The Last Breath

by Kimberly Belle

  Lexi’s hand throttles my fingers. “Nobody’s trying to trick you, I swear.”

  I chance a glance up the porch. Bo is frozen in shock at the edge, strangling the railing with both hands, but I don’t see either Cal or Fannie. Even more people have materialized up at the mailbox, sneaking out of their houses and through the woods to watch the show, but none of them seem to be reaching for either a cell phone or a concealed weapon. And where the hell is Jimmy?

  Relief floods my senses and loosens my bones when I hear an engine roaring in the distance, then bubbles into intense, giddy joy when Jake’s truck crests the hill. He stops with a screech of brakes at the mailbox.

  Dean’s reactions are delayed and unsteady, but after a few extra beats, he swivels his body to Jake’s parked truck. A warning scream sticks in my throat.

  Through the front windshield, Jake’s eyes find mine for a brief second, and he winks. There’s nothing the least bit flirtatious about the gesture. It’s meant to calm me, to reassure me.

  It doesn’t work.

  Jake slides out of the cab, confidently, casually, like people point deadly weapons at his head every day. He doles out greetings to the crowd as if this is a typical Tuesday morning visit. When he strolls his way down the drive, straight at Dean and his pistol, he might as well be whistling Dixie.

  “Somebody decide to have a party and forget to call me?” Jake’s voice is measured and even, and I don’t know how he does it, but he manages to pull up a sincere smile.

  “You again.” Dean’s spiteful tone, combined with the look of pure hatred on his face, has me dropping my gaze to his trigger finger, watching for even the slightest twitch. “Hold it right there, boy.”

  Jake holds it there, a good ten-foot shot away, and he holds up both palms. “Why don’t you put that gun down, Mr. Sullivan, and we’ll talk this out.”

  “Talking’s what got me into this mess in the first place. Talking about what I saw that night. Talking about the baby. If you don’t mind, I think I’m all talked out.”

  “I don’t mind at all.” Jake glances over his shoulder at the people huddled together by the mailbox, then back to Dean. “In fact, why don’t I talk instead? Because I came over here with something to say, and it’s just as good I do so with an audience.”

  And then he does the unthinkable. He turns his back on the man holding the gun and faces me.

  Behind him, Dean looks stumped, and his shooting arm drops a good half foot.

  “You left before I could tell you you were wrong,” Jake says as if we’re the only two people on the front lawn, as if a confused Dean wasn’t swiveling his gun, back and forth, between me and Jake.

  I shake my head, not understanding, not caring that I don’t understand, not concerned about anything other than Dean’s bullets.

  “You said all of our choices were irrelevant,” he says, inching to the right, “and maybe some of them are. But not the most important one, the one where I choose to love you, and you choose to love me back. I choose you, Gia. Choose to love me back.”

  Greg Lawson’s mother presses a fleshy hand to her even fleshier chest. “Aw, ain’t that just the sweetest thing I ever did hear?”

  Jake gives her an appreciative nod. “I thank you for saying so, Mary.”

  “But you were right, too,” he tells me, taking another step. “There have been too many secrets, and I’m gonna do something about that.” He swivels his body to face the crowd. “Thirty-four years ago, Ella Mae Andrews had a baby boy. She was young and scared at the time, but mature enough to know she couldn’t give her son the life he deserved so she found a loving couple who could. I thank God every day for her sacrifice, because I’m that boy. I’m Ella Mae’s son.”

  There are a few gasps, the loudest of which comes from Dean, and a flurry of whispers makes its way through the crowd. Jake uses the distraction. He takes a few subtle steps to his right, sweeping his gaze over Lexi and me until it lands on Bo, stock-still on the edge of the porch. An entire conversation passes between the two men in an instant, communicated not in spoken words but in subtly raised brows and squinted eyes and pinched mouths. Bo dips his head in understanding. Lexi cringes closer to my side. My heart stops.

  Jake looks over at me, and he doesn’t say a word, but then again, he doesn’t have to. His eyes say everything I could ever hope to hear.

  And then he returns his attention to the crowd. “I know I should’ve told you the truth that very first night I rode into town, and I know I should be sorry, but I’m not. Because if I had told you folks—” he points a long arm at me, shifting more to his right and planting himself directly in the line between the barrel of Dean’s gun and me “—then that gorgeous woman over there would’ve never loved me, and I would’ve never loved her back.”

  My breath catches in my throat, and a shudder pummels my torso. I will not have Jake taking my bullet. I shake my head, frantic.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Bo duck around the corner of the porch and slip out of sight.

  Jake holds my gaze, ignores my protests. “You and I are connected by our pasts, by people who made sometimes stupid decisions we had absolutely no control over. But here’s something we can control. Let’s forget about the people who came before us, and not allow their mistakes to influence you and me. Let’s hold each other up despite the way our parents beat each other down. Let’s write our own happy ending. Because whatever happened sixteen years ago has nothing to do with you and me, except that it brought us here to this place.”

  It’s not his words, as beautiful as they are, but his willingness to step into a bullet’s path for me that does it. I’m about to rush into his embrace when a shot pierces the air and sends the cluster of spectators into a frenzy. They scatter like a pack of hunted quail, flying apart and taking cover behind their cars. I barely notice, because I’m concentrating on Jake’s body, which goes stiff with shock. I scream his name, but he stops me with a palm in the air.

  “I’m okay. I’m not shot.”

  Jake holds up his other hand and slowly turns to face Dean, giving me a clear view of him, pointing the smoking barrel into the brand-new blue sky.

  “Jesus Christ,” Lexi says on a sigh.

  A warning shot. My knees wobble with relief.

  “You have no idea,” Dean slurs, right as Jake steps between us again, “no goddamn idea, what my life has been like since that murdering sonovabitch took Ella Mae. I lost my job, my family, my life. All because of Ray Andrews. He was supposed to go away for life. He deserved the motherfucking needle.”

  In the corner of my vision, I catch a shape coming up the hill to my left.

  “And then you people—” I wish I could see Dean, so I knew which people, and where he’s pointing his gun “—start blabbering about me and Ella Mae all over town, and suddenly everybody’s calling me a liar and wrecking my house. I’m not a liar, dammit! I saw Ray Andr—”

  A blur I briefly recognize as Bo shoots from behind a bush and tackles Dean. Lexi is lightning fast, too, shoving me out of the way, and I slide across the lawn, a tangle of grass and leaves and limbs. I come to a sudden stop at a tree, slamming into the trunk with my shoulder hard enough that I wonder if I’m the one who was hit.

  Because sometime in the space between Bo tackling Dean and Lexi pushing me halfway across the yard, Dean pinched off another shot.

  And then I see Bo holding Dean at gunpoint and Lexi rushing forward to a body, lying motionless on the driveway. I crawl over and push her out of the way, barely noticing the sound of sirens growing closer through the valley, the crowd of concerned faces watching down all around us, the way my tears soak with blood into a growing puddle on Jake’s flannel shirt.

  How many times have I watched someone die in the field? Too many to count. Maybe I have been overexposed by all the disasters I’ve seen, made less sensitive
to all the suffering around me, because that moment of last breath has never scared me. To be the last face someone sees in this lifetime is a beautiful thing. A precious, priceless gift.

  Now, though, I’m afraid of death. Terrified. I know this when Jake won’t open his eyes, not when I press a hand over his wound, dangerously close to where his heart is, spurting blood, too much blood into my palm, squeezing sticky and warm between my fingers. Not when I hold his limp hand in the ambulance, careening and wailing through the hills to Hawkins County Memorial, and beg him to hold on, just a little longer. Not when I cry into his chest and tell him I love him, right before they whisk him away from me and into the emergency room.

  Now I see there is nothing beautiful about death. Death is not precious or priceless. For the person close to the dying soul—a parent, a lover, a child—death is not a gift but a thief.

  40

  I LEAN BACK on the bench, and late-afternoon sunlight filters through the pink clouds of cherry tree blossoms above my head. It’s May, a full three months after I was called home to take care of Dad, and I’m still here, in Rogersville.

  And surprisingly, not all of my time here has been bad. Lexi was right. My blood, like hers and Bo’s, is mixed with mountain water, and this place—this town and the mountains and rivers and valleys that surround it—is as much a part of me as my skin and bones. It whispers for me to stay, even while another part, a larger part, tells me it’s time to go.

  Beyond my outstretched feet, Ella Mae’s Memorial Garden blooms like a springtime carpet, a riot of hydrangeas and peonies and lilacs and even a few straggler tulips, swaying above fledgling grass shoots. Lexi was right about that, too. This is the perfect spot.

  The wind kicks up, and the shirt I pilfered from Jake’s drawer dances and bucks around me like a tethered kite. When I stand, it flaps around my shoulders, straining for the sky and beyond, and my gypsy soul stirs. Where will the kite take me this time? To Africa? Asia? The Arby’s down the road? Wherever disaster strikes next, I suppose.

  My name, called out by a familiar throaty voice, floats up the hill on a fresh breeze. I turn and there she is, Sexy Lexi Andrews, sashaying up the pea gravel walkway like it’s a catwalk. “How did I know I’d find you up here?”

  I grin. Lexi knows the thinking bench is where I’ve spent the better part of the past three months, watching plants nudge their ways through the soil and, well, thinking. About Dad and Ella Mae. About Lexi and Bo and Cal and Dean. About Jake. Most of all, I think about Jake and how he was right, too. What happened here all those years ago has nothing to do with him and me, but wisdom like his is easy to miss when you’re in the eye of the storm.

  “Everybody’s down at the truck, waiting.” She jerks a manicured thumb down the path she came in on. “You coming?”

  “Yeah, I was just...” I spread my arms wide and look around, like the answer is tucked behind the fronds and flowers. “I don’t know. Letting go, I guess.”

  She gives me a dubious look. Letting go is a concept Lexi has never considered. “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  Other than to purse her pretty lips, Lexi doesn’t respond, and I don’t push it. I know she’s not ready, may never be ready. She’s already told me she was relieved to learn the truth about Dad. As much as she wanted to believe he was innocent, she said she should have known something was off when forgiveness never felt as comfortable as her blame, as if we were talking about a pair of worn-in jeans, or an old flannel shirt.

  But she’s finally managed to let go of some of her hatred, at least toward Dad. All that anger had to go somewhere, though, so she picked it up and transferred it over to Cal. When I remind her he spent the entire thirteen and a half minutes we were at gunpoint using his lawyer voice on the 9-1-1 operator, ordering the police to hurry the hell up before he sued the entire state of Tennessee for negligence, she tells me it doesn’t matter. She says she will never forgive him for lying for Dad, and I have no reason not to believe her.

  “It’s not too late to change your mind, you know,” she says softly, her voice pulsing with hope. “One of my clients runs the YMCA in Kingsport. He’ll know where to start, who to talk to...” She pauses to take in my expression, and hers falls. “You’re not going to change your mind, are you?”

  I don’t shake my head, but I don’t nod, either. I just head down the hill, not stopping until I’m right in front of her.

  “It’s not for forever,” I say as much to Lexi as to myself. “I’ll be back soon, I promise.”

  “That’s what you said last time.” When I don’t respond, she snorts. “Okay, fine. You might have said something like that last time, but it was hard to hear over your gunning engine and squealing tires. Those old track marks are still on the driveway, you know. They smoked for days.”

  I laugh at the same time a sob pushes up my throat. I’m ready to leave, but at the same time, it shatters my heart to go.

  I don’t have to tell any of this to Lexi. She always could read my mind. “Me, too,” she whispers, and the fresh tears in her eyes mirror mine. She links her arm through mine, tugging me down the path. “But it’s time.”

  We walk in silence for a bit, our shoes crunching in the gravel.

  Jake said we can’t change our pasts, and he was right about that, too. Trying to change what happened with my father and Ella Mae, with Dean and Cal, with me and Jake, would be like trying to stuff the flowers back down into the soil...impossible.

  What’s important is what comes next. Do we spend the rest of our days chasing someone else’s disasters, filled with hate and resentment? Do we put what happened in a box and shove it to the back of our closets, refusing to forgive or at the very least, pretending to forget? Or do we somehow learn to adjust and make peace?

  As for me, I choose the last. I plan to take Jake’s advice and figure out how to not let my past influence my future. I plan to write my own happy ending.

  Lexi and I emerge onto Main Street’s empty sidewalk, a few blocks down from Roadkill, now owned by a nice couple from Mount Carmel. Jake’s truck idles, packed and fueled at the curb. Bo and Amy push off the bumper when they see us coming.

  “Make sure to check the tires and top off the oil on your way out,” Bo says, gesturing to the truck. “Washer fluid might be a little low, too.”

  I could tell him I had the truck checked out, bumper to bumper, just yesterday, but I don’t. If measuring sticks and air pumps are how Bo wants to express his love, who am I to complain? Instead, I pull him into a fierce hug and kiss him on the cheek.

  “Thanks, bro. I’ll see you soon.”

  He nods brusquely and hands me off to Amy, then blinks at the concrete while Lexi and I share our final, tearful goodbye.

  “Call me when you get to wherever you’re going, okay?” Lexi thinks better of it, shakes her head. “Or actually, no. Scratch that. Call me anytime, I don’t care when. Just call me. Often.”

  “Every single day.”

  “Okay, well, not that often. I have a life, you know.”

  Sharp footfalls sound behind me, heavy boots on concrete. I turn, and my heart gives a happy flip at the sight of Jake. Hair a little longer, frame a little thinner, but my point is, he’s still here.

  I gesture to the battered duffel in his fist. “Do you have everything?”

  He tosses the bag in the bed of his truck then steps close, as close as you can get without touching, and tucks a curl behind my ear. “Everything I need.”

  “God, y’all are disgusting,” Lexi says, but there’s a smile in her voice. She shoos us into the truck. “Leave already.”

  Once we’re settled, Jake behind the wheel and me pushed up against him until there is not a sliver of space between us, Lexi leans her arms over the open passenger window. “You take care of my baby sister, you hear me?”

  “I he
ar you,” Jake says. “I’ll bring her back, too.”

  Lexi slaps the side of the truck and steps back, taking up next to Bo and Amy on the sidewalk, while Jake works the gear shift into Drive.

  “Ready?”

  I deposit a kiss on his pec, an inch or two to the right of his scar, and nod.

  He reaches for the wheel, then pauses. “Uh, where are we going, exactly?”

  Somewhere on this planet, seas are churning, locusts are swarming, plates are shifting under the earth’s crust. Who knows where the next disaster will strike, or how long we have until it does. I want to make every second until then count.

  I swing my feet up onto the dash, blow a kiss to my family and point straight down Main. “Just drive.”

  * * * * *

  Acknowledgments

  WRITING A BOOK is a lonely venture, and I am blessed to be surrounded by people who don’t put up with my attempts at seclusion for very long.

  To my agent, Nikki Terpilowski, and my editor, Rachel Burkot. Thank you for loving this story as much as I do, for all the ways you helped me shape it into a book, for your enthusiasm in sending it out into the world. I feel as though I won the literary jackpot with you both.

  To the sweetest sistahs a girl could ask for: Lara Chapman, Koreen Myers, Alex Ratcliff. Your support, critiques, shoulders, advice, cheerleading, laughs and friendship make my world a much brighter place. And to Margie Lawson, who gave me my sistahs and taught me more about the craft than I thought was possible. I’m not exaggerating when I say this book would not exist without you and your brilliant coaching. Thanks for sitting on my shoulder while I write.

  To the lovely ladies of Altitude—Nancy Davis, Marquette Dreesch, Sima Lal Gupta, Angelique Kilkelly, Jen Robinson, Amanda Sapra and Tracy Willoughby. You gals have been there every step of the way, and you’ve made the long road bearable. Thanks for always having my back and cheering me on.