I parked beside the unfamiliar truck and rolled my head slowly, first down and then back up, still hearing the highway in my mind, determined not to think again of Jackie for at least ten minutes. The Leinenkuegel, Moosehead, and Hamm’s beer signs in the front window were glinting warm colors into the night; technically Shore Leave was still open, but it was a weeknight and most of the hard-core drinkers had retired to Eddie’s. This early in the season, tourist traffic was light, but in less than three weeks that would change. From the direction of the boat landing, down the shore about twenty yards, came a yodeling cry, and I grinned in spite of myself.
“Mom, Aunt Ellen, everybody, THEY’RE HERE!” my little sister shrieked, and the girls began hooting in response, piling out of the car and running towards the sound. I climbed out more slowly, happy on the surface, where people could see. Fuck, it just sucked (there was no other way to put it) that I was coming home as the spurned woman, the jilted, separated wife, the girl who couldn’t keep her husband in her own bed…I was gritting my teeth and stopped myself instantly. And then I was laughing as the girls and Jilly collided hard enough to send them into a heap on the grass at the edge of the parking lot. My mother’s golden labs came barreling from down by the lake, barking at the top of their range. The girls were laughing and screaming as they piled on Jilly, wrestling to get closer to her as one of the dogs grabbed the rear of Tish’s jean shorts and began tugging.
“Joelle!” My mother was coming out of the front door, banging the screen we’d always been bitched at for banging, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. Aunt Ellen and Rich were in her wake, waving and calling, and I hurried forward and into Mom’s warm bare arms, resisting the urge to burrow against her like a child seeking refuge. She hugged me hard and planted a kiss on my temple before turning me over to my auntie, whose plump freckled arms, so like Mom’s, curled me tight and snug. Rich, who was the closest thing to a father I’d ever known, hugged me too, and ruffled my hair.
“Looks pretty, long like that,” he added, grinning so that his bushy white eyebrows drew nearly together over his kind brown eyes. He was as dear and solid as ever, and I felt a momentary flush of gratitude that these people, my foundation, were here and unchanging as the summer stars. In my teenage years, they’d been claustrophobic in their concerns, driving me out of my skin with constant advice and commentary; but now, seventeen years later I sought this place, my true home, to regroup. Or shoot myself. Or at least get talked out of shooting my children’s father. Repeatedly.
“Hi, sweetie,” Aunt Ellen said, drawing me close against her side. “You look like you could use a drink.”
“Or a bar,” Mom added, meaning dessert.
“You want a sandwich, little one?” Rich asked, thumbing over his shoulder in the direction of his kitchen.
“Oh, no, not at the moment,” I told them, although a drink sounded fantastic. “But thanks.”
In the next moment my sister was bolting across the parking lot, shrieking with laughter as my kids and both dogs pursued her. I turned to catch her in a hug, and we rocked together for a moment before being attacked by the mob.
“Look at these beautiful girls,” Mom said, claiming her granddaughters for a round of hugs. “Camille, you look so grown-up, doesn’t she, Ellen? Look at that face! And my Patricia, what have you done to your hair?”
Rich caught up Ruthann in a bear hug, and then bounced her on his arm. “Ain’t you grown a bit since I saw you last,” he observed, and Ruthann, my baby, grinned shyly.
“Aunt Jilly, where’s Clint?” Tish asked, peering around as though her cousin and best friend in Landon were hiding in the woods.
Jilly was small and deeply tanned, her own hair cropped as short as Tish’s, white-blonde from both the long days outside and a healthy dose of Sun-In. She gave me a look I couldn’t interpret (unheard of) and then caught Tish in a light headlock and knuckled her scalp. “Not here, punk. He must not care that you guys were coming.”
Tish ducked away good-naturedly and fastidiously smoothed her hair. “Whatever. Where is he?”
“Inside, sleeping, along with your great-gran,” Aunt Ellen answered. “He was tuckered out from the ball game today. He was waiting and waiting for you all to get here and ended up falling asleep on table three. Rich hauled him home to bed.”
The girls giggled. “What a baby,” Tish felt compelled to add. “It’s not even barely midnight.”
“Time for these bones to head out, though,” Rich said, and pecked my cheek before taking his quiet leave. “Tell the grandson I’ll see him tomorrow.”
“Will do, Rich,” Mom told him, as Aunt Ellen herded everyone inside.
“Night, Rich,” I added, before following Jilly up the porch steps. Mom was walking Rich to his car and the girls were already in the café, no doubt being plied with sweets and possibly booze by Aunt Ellen. I paused before entering and leaned over the porch rail, my gaze absorbing sights nearly as familiar to me as my own body. The lake, cloaked in warm, velvet May darkness, stretched back to Landon’s main street, where the lamps were small golden dots in the blackness. In the other direction, to my left, Flickertail curved around a slender bend before opening into a much wider surface area, where jet-skis and motor boats whined from dawn until early evening, dragging skiers and wake boarders. The farthest shore, not visible from our porch, was similarly busy in the daylight, where fisherman tarried for hours upon end, drinking and bullshitting and doing what they loved. Though fully dark, I could see the edges of the trees that ringed the lake from memory; if I lifted my index finger I could trace the wavering line in the air. Jilly elbowed up beside me and for a moment I rested my head on her shoulder.
“You okay?” she murmured, and I lifted my head, and sighed.
“Rich’s grandson?” I asked a moment later, wishing I had a burning cigarette caught delicately between my fingers just now. Years had passed since my last one, but the moment I got home, on ancient turf, an insistent craving began until I either gave in, guilted the hell out of myself, or fell asleep. “He doesn’t have any kids, does he?” Rich had been married twice, but neither of those unions had produced children, that I knew of, anyway. And I’d known Rich for exactly as long as I’d been alive.
“Actually, it’s his stepdaughter Christy’s son,” Jilly reminded me. “You remember her, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I guess, vaguely.” A memory flickered. “Boobs and big hair, like 1978, right?”
“Yeah, that’s her. She stayed with him and Pam that summer. Crap, it seems like a million years ago now.” Jilly sighed too. “Anyway, she had a kid, and now he’s staying with Rich in his trailer, even though Pam’s gone. Mom hired him to help in the kitchen this summer. He’s actually here now, having a beer.”
“Dammit,” I murmured, annoyed that a stranger, even a stranger connected to Rich, was infringing on my homecoming. “Is he even old enough to drink?”
“Yeah, he’s in his twenties,” Jilly said. “And he was in jail.”
My head darted to the left and I stared at her in shock. All of the mommy-activated alarm bells in my head were shrieking. “What?”
“Seriously, I freaked a little too, but Rich insists that he’s a good kid.” In response to the panicked question in my eyes, she added, “He stole a car and some cash in Oklahoma, two years ago.”
I absorbed this not-so-bad-as-I-had-imagined information, yet still felt fidgety and pissed. I could hear the girls chattering with Aunt Ellen, their voices piping and genuinely pleased; just around the corner in the bar, my mother’s bar, an ex-con was having a drink, listening.
“Jilly, what was she thinking?” I whispered furtively, peering over my shoulder, and my sister surprised me by laughing her warm, rollicking laugh.
She unselfconsciously ran her fingers through her close-cropped hair and then squeezed my arm before saying, “It’s not like you have to whisper, Jo. I don’t think he has superhero senses.”
Mom was climbing the steps now, as Rich’s taill
ights winked ruby before he turned right and headed back into town. I accosted her immediately. “Mom, how could you?” I demanded, yelling in a whisper, annoyed now at Jilly too, for laughing at me. She was a mother, but not of daughters, and that does make a difference in outlook, I swear. Clint was tall and strong , the image of his father. He wasn’t vulnerable the way my girls were.
Mom stopped and sighed; she’d tossed her dishtowel over one shoulder and reached now into the front pocket of her overhauls for a slim pack of smokes. Her silver-streaked hair was still long, caught up in a tortoiseshell clip on the crown of her head, her ears appearing sunburned in the yellow glow of the porch light. Wordlessly, she passed one to me and then Jilly, and then drew a lighter from her side pocket. She never smoked anymore, unless under stress. I sincerely hoped the stress wasn’t caused by the proximity of a former criminal, but instead her eldest daughter’s disgraceful and undignified return home, bearing her children and all of her dear worldly possessions, crammed into the trunk of a luxurious Toyota. Mom lit up and passed the small plastic tool to Jilly; I sighed and handed back the cigarette, unable to in front of the kids. I settled for second-hand instead.
“Honestly, Jo, he’s a good kid,” Mom said, low, blowing smoke toward the lake. “Do you think Ellen or I would’ve hired him if we didn’t think so?”
“Because of Rich,” I pointed out. “You couldn’t say no to him, you know it.”
Mom shook her head, and from the far side Jilly elbowed me. Mom griped, “Rich wouldn’t have taken him in, even in honor of Pamela’s memory, if he thought Bly was dangerous. Criminy, Joelle.”
“Bly?” I asked, turning to my sister.
“His name is Blythe,” she informed me, blowing smoke from both nostrils. Mom dropped her filter into an empty beer can on the windowsill and went inside without another word. She’d had enough of the day and her daughters questioning her judgment, I supposed. Quietly, and yet full of teasing, Jilly added, “And she’s wrong, he is dangerous.”
I gave her a withering look but she only smiled, so Jillian. “The girls are meeting him right now,” she said, heading inside, and I darted after her at that, all of the repressed irritation that had been thrumming under the surface of my skin rushing up and into my throat.
“Girls, this is Rich’s grandson,” I heard Aunt Ellen saying. I followed Jilly around the arched wall separating the bar from the rest of the café, my lips set in a hard line. I came around the corner and blinked once, then again, noticing things in slow motion. My oldest daughter’s radiant smile. Tish’s slightly open mouth. Ruthann’s hazel eyes round and glowing. Aunt Ellen and Mom were both grinning up at who I could only assume was the car thief with the ridiculously sentimental name, Gilbert’s name from Anne of Green Gables.
He was gorgeous. Unbelievably, excruciatingly, insanely so. There was no denying it, no matter how much older than him I must certainly have been, no matter what his sketchy past. I stopped as though having run up against a barbed wire fence and stared inanely before catching myself and darting my gaze elsewhere. My daughters had certainly noticed, and were in various stages of adoration; he glanced momentarily over at me and nodded slightly, acknowledging yet another female presence in his sphere of influence before turning his attention back to my mother. He was grinning at something she was saying, grinning more with one side of his lips than the other. He had full, amazing lips set in a lean face with a strong cleft chin. He was tall, towering over all of us, scruffy dark-blond hair under a blue bandana tied over his head like a hard-core biker’s. His eyebrows were darker than his hair, framing amused eyes, the kind of eyes that would be grinning even when he was not, rich navy-blue eyes. Long lashes. Hunky shoulders. Strong hands.
I observed all these things in less than ten seconds. Somehow that was also sufficient time to set my pulse humming before I cursed myself for a nearly-middle-aged fool. Just as I opened my mouth to introduce myself, Aunt Ellen did the honors for me, saying, “Honey, this is Rich’s grandson, Blythe Tilson. Bly, dear, meet my niece, Joelle Gordon. She’s just in from Chicago.”
“Hi,” he said just for me, warm and deep-voiced, offering a hand. I swallowed and gathered myself, smiling back, wishing I’d checked my reflection even once since leaving the city around dawn yesterday. I shook his hand swiftly, trying again not to stare at him. His hand was warm and hard. Of course.
“Hi,” I added, my voice unnaturally husky, and then managed, “Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise,” he returned politely, then, “Well, Joan, Ellen, I better head home, let you have some family time,” and a gaggle of girls, including my mother, followed him to the front door. Only Jilly and I remained behind. She grinned knowingly, like an imp of misfortune, while I sank to a barstool and lowered my chin to my right palm. From the other room, Bly called back, “Have a good night, ladies. Good to meet you, Joelle.”
I shook my head slowly, not visible from where he was standing, letting my children offer a chorus of heartfelt good-nights. The screen door clicked shut behind him and we all heard his footsteps reverberate over the deck as he headed for his truck. I hoped the girls weren’t pressing their noses to the window screen. Jilly hauled a barstool closer to mine and said, “Told you so.”
Chapter Two
We sat for another hour at the bar, and then moved out to the glider that Dodge had bolted onto the planks at the end of our dock years ago. It, too, was the faded color of cinders, but soft and worn, and wholly familiar. I sipped my fifth beer while Jilly munched a microwave corn dog. The girls had been tucked in long since; they were sharing one of the loft rooms at the top of our house, not fifty yards along the shore from the café. Down by the lake in the predawn hours the air was chilly and damp, thick with the sounds of woodland and shore-dwelling creatures. I drew my knees under the faded afghan I’d dragged from house earlier, after depositing my things in mine and Jilly’s old room, listening to the spring peepers and gray tree frogs chanting their ever-lovin’ hearts out as they sought mates in the lush beach mud. A thousand and more crickets harmonized; I still stubbornly clung to my childhood belief that crickets sang with their little faces pointed toward the moon, rather than scraping their back legs together. Mosquitoes whined near our ears, but I kept my bare arms and feet wrapped in the wool of the blanket and felt relatively protected. Jilly, bundled in a hooded sweatshirt, sat Indian-fashion beside me, and for a long time we studied the fortune of stars flung out across the three a.m. sky; I was dizzy from both exhaustion and the beer, and would occasionally get caught up in the view, feeling as though I could detach from myself and dart up there and use the stars like stepping stones to a distant place.
“Jo, you’re drunk,” Jilly giggled, and I realized I had been speaking that last thought aloud. “You just got here, don’t go leaving yet.”
“The boy is gorgeous,” I muttered, and Jilly snorted, her mouth full of corn dog.
“Hell yes he is,” she agreed. “The kind you can see coming a mile and more away.”
I pressed the beer can against my chest and cupped my forehead with the other hand. I heard myself say, “I miss Jackie so bad.”
I sensed Jilly groping for an appropriate response. She settled for resting her cheek against the afghan over my left shoulder. I could smell the fragrance of her lavender-scented shampoo, the coconut oil from her face, the beer and cornmeal on her breath. At last she murmured, “I know. I really do.”
And at that I felt even shittier, because I knew that what she said was true: she did know, and then some. I had only been gone from Landon for five years when Chris died, her Christopher, who Jilly had loved so much and with such abandon that, in my secret heart, guarded intently, I was jealous. I loved Jackie, and believed then that I always would, but Chris and Jilly had something beyond that, something I could sense without directly admitting it to myself. Chris had been her One True Love, and even now, twelve years later, she had never gotten over him, had never seriously dated another man. It was her self-inflicte
d punishment, her personal torture, and she lived solely now for Clint, their baby, who was only three that terrible winter when Chris had fallen through the ice on his snowmobile and drowned. It didn’t matter what had claimed his life that night: beer, the cold, the icy water or his own brazen recklessness, he was gone. And Jilly was left behind, his devastated widow with a toddler. Eventually she’d moved back in with Mom and Aunt Ellen, who’d helped her pick up the few straggling pieces of her heart that hadn’t been buried with Chris, helped her raise Clint into a young man. I sighed and gritted my teeth again; what was a cheating husband compared to that? At least Jackie was alive out there.
As always, Jilly followed the trail of my thoughts almost exactly. “Don’t,” she whispered. “It’s still horrible. And your marriage, your relationship, is dead, even if Jackie isn’t.”
“Jilly, don’t,” I moaned, hating her a little for always being stronger. I was the older sister, dammit. But she was wiser in so many ways.
“I’m sorry, Jo. I know this sounds selfish in the extreme, but I’m glad you’re back. I’ve missed you so much, and now I have you all to myself again. I ought to thank Jackie for it.”
I laughed then, a little pathetic huff. Finally I admitted, “I knew he was cheating a few years back. I freaking knew it, but I couldn’t admit it to myself.”
“Like it’s an easy thing to do,” Jilly said. “What happened?”
But suddenly the urge to discuss my cheating spouse drained away, down into a deep well of sadness within my chest. I wanted to blame him explicitly, entirely, but that was wrong, and I knew it; the truth was, the closest thing I’d felt to desire in a long, long time had been earlier tonight, coming unexpectedly upon the sight of my mother’s new hired help. Blythe, of the wide shoulders and smoldering eyes, the full lips and scruffy jaw. In the face of my self-doubt I had denied my husband my desire for too long; what had I expected? When we married, when we were in love, long ago, I had abandoned myself to him, had given every square inch of my skin up to his mouth, his tongue, his big strong hands. We’d been wild and had tangled our bodies together making love. Jackie, who’d rubbed his face against my pregnant belly and spoken so tenderly to all three girls through my sensitive flesh, who’d cupped their tiny sleek heads moments after birth, planted bitty kisses on their smushy newborn faces. I would never share moments like that with anyone else; I would be thirty-six in August, too young to consider being without my man, but way too fucking old to start over with someone new, at least in my hurting, judgmental mind. I could hardly bear the thought of it.
Summer at the Shore Leave Cafe Page 2