I needed to be the woman Jonny needed me to be so he, too, could be free.
“Your dad cheated,” I blurted the moment Jonny’s rear end landed on the couch cushion next to me.
It wasn’t a question, it was a starting point.
“Yep.”
That was it, all he gave me. I decided to give him a few seconds to gather his thoughts. But when seconds ticked into a full minute and he offered no more, I questioned bringing it up.
“My daddy’s name is Elmer,” I told him. “My brother’s name is Elmer Junior. Everyone calls him EJ.”
Jonny said nothing and I was wondering why I’d imparted that stupid tidbit of knowledge.
“My dad’s name was Calvin Douglas,” Jonny returned. “My brother’s name was Doug. His mother named him after her father.”
Something funny tingled the back of my neck. Doug was adopted. I didn’t know much about how that worked but Jonny knowing how Doug got his name seemed weird. But more—the way Jonny said it gave me a chill.
“Everyone back home knew my daddy kept women on the side,” I told him. “I was too little to understand but he used to say he was going fishin’. Sometimes he’d only be gone a short while, sometimes a few days. I never got it, because Daddy fished a lot. And I’d see him down at the creek with EJ, both of them with poles, when he hadn’t announced to my mom he was goin’. It wasn’t ‘til I was older when I learned there was a difference between fishin’ and fishin’. By the time I understood, my mom was long gone, and Daddy’s fishin’ trips never dried up.”
I heard Jonny suck in a breath and I hoped like hell he didn’t offer words of sympathy. I could get through this one way and one way only—exchanging information. I could commiserate but I couldn’t handle him feeling sorry for me.
Jonny leaned back and stretched his long legs out in front of him and let his head rest on the back of the couch.
He was staring at the ceiling when he told me, “I don’t know when it started. At least five years before I was born. My mom won’t talk about it. When my dad was alive, he sure as fuck didn’t talk about it.” That tingle started to grow. “I don’t think it ever stopped. I’ve thought on it a lot. My dad was an insurance broker; he didn’t travel for work, but he sure as hell had a lot of conferences he had to attend. Weekends away, sometimes a full week, others quick overnights. When I was growing up, it seemed he had something going on at least once a month. I reckon my ma knew. They fought about him being gone so much.”
I watched Jonny’s throat constrict as he swallowed, the sight so heartbreaking I decided he had the right idea. I slid my booty to the edge of the couch, mimicking his pose, and found a spot on the tongue-and-groove ceiling to focus on.
That was much easier than witnessing Jonny’s pain and I didn’t want him to see mine.
It sucked, but it would seem he and I were the same.
Not the products of our environments. But two people who’d been forced to survive a situation neither of us created.
We were survivors, but I didn’t think Jonny would see it that way.
“I was five when my mom took off. She never came back.”
The familiar taste of acid in my esophagus threatened to choke me. Of all the things I’d learned to get over, the abandonment wasn’t one of them. All these years later it was still raw, fresh; the ache still burned. The grief, the questions, the anger. I couldn’t for the life of me fathom how a mother could leave her babies. How she could turn her back and walk away. Never return. Never write, call, something. Before she left, my mom had neglected her children, she wasn’t a good mom, she hadn’t showered us with affection and love. But she was there. Then she wasn’t and the rejection didn’t sting. It didn’t burn. It didn’t hurt. It wasn’t an open festering wound.
It killed.
Month after month, it built. Year after year, it gained strength. Until the feeling sitting inside of me was so big and powerful it felt like dynamite just waiting to blow.
A ticking time bomb constructed from a mother’s rejection.
I felt Jonny’s hand cover mine.
A touch that didn’t defuse the pain but made the spark recede.
Still so weak.
“I was five when Doug came to live with us.” Jonny’s fingers pushed between mine and I squeezed, hoping he’d continue. A few beats later, I heard a long exhale. Then I waited and I waited even longer until Jonny squeezed back. “The story was, Doug’s mother had cancer and while she was going through treatments he needed a place to live.”
God, that was horrible. I’d heard bad things about Jonny’s brother, all of them unfortunately true, but my heart still hurt for the little boy who went to live with the Spencers.
Wait, Jonny had said story.
“Was that not true?” I asked.
“It was true. Carla, Doug’s mother, had cancer. The part that’s never talked about though is, my parents didn’t take in some random boy who needed help. They didn’t take Doug out of the goodness of their hearts. They—or should I say, my father—took him because Doug was his son. His biological son.”
At least five years before I was born.
“Were your parents together then?” I asked gently.
“My parents met in high school. My granddad used to say he got off lucky that his only girl married the first boy she dated so he only had to clean his shotgun once. No parade of boys through his living room. Just my father.” Jonny paused and the next part was snarled with extreme hate. “Fucking laughable. Lucky. The worst day of my mother’s life was when she met that piece of shit.”
I should’ve known to brace. The earlier call with his mother, the bitter outburst. I absolutely should’ve battened down the hatches. I should’ve known Jonny had the same ticking time bomb in his gut that I did.
I didn’t brace.
Then Jonny exploded.
And it was agony to witness. But I forced myself to take in every second.
“That piece of shit went to high school with Carla, too. She was younger than them by one grade. I’d like to hope dear old Dad wasn’t fucking Carla when she was in middle school but he was fucking her when he and my mom were seniors and Carla was a junior.”
Oh, no.
“How do you know that?”
“Heard them fighting. Dad admitted it, but he did it ugly. Told my mother since she’d wanted to wait until they got married, and she wasn’t seeing to his needs, Carla was.”
That was mean. Mean and gross.
But before I could say anything Jonny continued, “Another fight, he told my mother he loved them both. He struggled with what he was doing but he couldn’t choose.”
Then Jonny was on his feet and he shouted, “The motherfucker couldn’t choose!” Icy blue eyes sliced to me and I couldn’t contain my flinch. “Can you believe that shit?”
“No, Jonny, I can’t.”
“The asshole had a wife at home and a girlfriend.”
I knew how that felt. Only I didn’t because I wasn’t a son who looked up to his father. I was a daughter whose dad treated women like shit.
“My dad knew about Doug. Went to see him. For years my father drove his lying sack of shit ass to Pennsylvania once a month to see his son. You wanna know who didn’t know? My mother. Not until Carla got so sick she couldn’t take care of Doug did that jackass tell my mother that his love child existed. After that, my mother was gone. She was there but she was gone. A woman forced to raise her husband’s child by another woman. No, not by another woman, my father’s girlfriend. The girlfriend he’d been with for as long as he’d been with her. Then he expected her to keep it a secret.”
“Jonny.” I started to stand but froze when his eyes narrowed.
“Don’t come near me.”
Shit. I hated that but I understood.
“Okay. I’ll stay here as long as you know I want to come to you.”
Apparently, that was the wrong thing to say.
Jonny leaned forward, tagged a bowl full of seas
hells off the table, and side-armed it. Glass shattered and shells scattered across the living room.
“God fucking dammit!” he roared.
Then with a face full of thunder that would’ve scared the pants off me if I hadn’t known down to my bones that Jonny would never hurt me, he heartbreakingly continued.
“I didn’t learn that shit because they sat me down and told me. I learned it because Doug was older and he’d heard the fights, too, fights he understood more than I did. He had ten years of seeing a man who he didn’t know as his father but as his mother’s friend. I don’t know how long Doug knew before he decided to spread his joyful news with the family but he was sixteen and in an argument with our dad about using the car. Then it all came out. How my dad went to see him, how he knew he was really Carla and Calvin’s son. Of course, this was news to me, but not to my mother. The whole time I watched her, and she fucking knew. That’s why she was drinking. That’s why my mother checked out when Doug came to live with us. And after that, they fought more and I snuck out of my room to listen to every argument I could. One would think since the secret was out we’d talk about it, but no, not them. I was told that family business was never to be discussed and Doug used the information to blackmail his way out of trouble. From then on, he got every fucking thing he wanted as long as he didn’t tell anyone he was Calvin Spencer’s son.”
The thunder left his face but pure disgust slid in.
“You wanna know what I got?”
No, I did not. I didn’t want Jonny talking about his father or his brother. I didn’t want to hear more about his mother’s drinking. Or how he’d lost her. I didn’t want to hear the devastation in his voice, not ever again.
But for him, so he could say what he had to say in hopes he could be set free, I’d listen.
“What’d you get, darlin’?”
“I got saddled with the burden of their lives. Their lies, his cheating, her drinking, Doug’s manipulation, Carla’s death. That’s what I got. And even now, both of them dead. Both of them leaving a trail of destruction in their wake, I’m still expected to keep the secrets of two assholes who did nothing in life to warrant my loyalty. Two fathers who cheated, lied, and hurt their children. Fuck that. Fuck them. And if I didn’t think it would drive my mother to her grave I’d shout it from Fountain Park that Calvin Spencer was a fraud.”
Jonny took an angry step toward me and leaned in deep when he said, “That’s in me, Roberta. That piece of shit made me the same as he made Doug. And we all know what was in my brother, pure asshole. That’s—”
“No!” I shouted and got to my feet. “No way, Jonny, you’re not doing that.”
“What?” He threw his arms out wide. “Finally telling the truth?”
“That’s not telling the truth. That’s bullshit.”
“Bobby—”
“Oh, no. I listened to you. I heard everything you said, Jonny, and I’m sorry you went through that, the same as I’m sorry I had to survive my childhood instead of being able to be a kid and enjoy it. But you are not them. You’re not your father and it’s total crap.”
Jonny was standing a few feet away from me scowling. It wasn’t the dirty look that concerned me, it was the hurt in his eyes. Icy blue, so beautiful they could warm me straight to my bones, so expressive. Now they were wounded and torn. I hated that. Hated it.
Time’s come, someone needs to shield him and that’s gonna be you, child.
Miss Lola was right—it was going to be me. I was going to be Jonny’s shield.
But she was also wrong, the Spencers didn’t sound like good, caring people. They certainly hadn’t been good to Jonny. If they’d pulled the wool over Miss Lola’s eyes, who had lived in Cliff City a good long while, and God love her but she was a nosy old bitty and so were her cronies. If there was gossip to be had, she’d know it. But she didn’t know Doug was Calvin’s blood. She didn’t know Calvin was a cheat and Anita had a drinking problem. Cliff City was small—hell, the whole county was small—people talked, and they’d certainly talk about that. And no one had because they didn’t know, and they didn’t know because Jonny had kept the secret. He didn’t keep that secret because he was embarrassed or wanted to keep it, he’d been forced to.
Assholes.
Jonny was the shield.
Every day he’d put on his white hat and served the community. He went to work doing the job he was born to do. Jonny was a protector. A shield. That was who he was.
And now, I was going to be his.
“My mom left me,” I spat. “She didn’t die, she didn’t move a town over and see me on weekends, or holidays, or call, or write. One day she said she was going to the store and she never came back. I was five, Jonny, but I remember. It was January in Kentucky, colder than a witch’s tit, snow on the ground, and the fire was running low. EJ was seven and hadn’t turned lazy asshole yet. He tried to put on another log and burned his hand. We waited and waited and she never came back. Elmer was out on a fishin’ trip, didn’t come home for two days. So me and EJ waited for him, too. Five and seven, two days alone in a rundown shack of a house, no food, and freezing cold. That’s what I remember, not that I was hungry or scared or didn’t know where my parents were, I was cold.”
Jonny’s gaze softened and I knew he felt my words but he was missing my point.
“I have that in me, Jonny. My mom abandoned me while my daddy was out fishin’. I come from criminals, cons, liars, and cheats. All that’s in me, too. So by your way of thinking, I’ll never be nothin’ different since I have that in me.”
“No, baby, that’s not what I’m saying.” Jonny made his way to me and stopped.
He lifted his hand but dropped it before he touched me. The pain of it sliced through me.
“Then what are you saying?”
I watched up close as a myriad of emotions played across Jonny’s face. I’d known him a while and in that time—since I’d fallen mostly in love with him the moment I met him and continued to fall every day since then—I’d watched him a lot. I’d seen him look murderous; that was when he saw me after I’d been attacked by Evie’s stalker when I’d woken up in the hospital. I’d seen him look at Rory and Caleb with a sadness I hadn’t understood until now. I’d also seen him happy, in pain, and angry. But right then I couldn’t read his expression and it worried me.
“I’m scared,” he muttered.
“What?”
My Jonny didn’t get scared.
“I’m scared,” he repeated and I wondered how much that took out of him to admit.
“What are you scared of, Jonny?”
“Of failing.”
God, Jonny.
Big, strong, brave Jonny afraid of failing. There was something so wrong about that it made my stomach clench. It also made me irate.
“I don’t know how to make you see what everyone else sees,” I started and reached for his hands. Once I had our fingers laced, I went on. “I don’t know how to make you believe me when I tell you you’re the best man I know. You’re a good friend, a good uncle, a good cop, and even after what they did you’re still a good son. I’ve never known you to fail at anything. But I also know fear is irrational and there’s nothing I can say to ease your worry. So I’ll have to show you.”
“Don’t let me hurt you.”
God, Jonny.
Tortured.
“You will, honey. You’re gonna hurt me and I’m gonna hurt you. And when you do I’m gonna stand by your side.”
“Bobby—”
“I love you.”
Jonny’s hands in mine twitched and his eyes went alert but not guarded. I took that as a good sign—not great, but good. A start.
This was the start of me and Jonny. I had six more days alone with him to build a foundation that could withstand a storm. Six days to lay the groundwork so when we got back and the weight of the world hit him, we wouldn’t crumble.
It was up to me. I had to be the shield.
9
Jonn
y was sitting on the back deck overlooking the ocean and watching the sun set, but this time he wasn’t doing it alone. Bobby sat next to him, her feet up on the railing, beer in hand.
This was better. Bobby sitting next to him.
But he still hated the beach.
Soon they’d be home and they could watch the sun set over the trees. His place or hers; he didn’t care as long as she was by his side.
“You know the only time I feel at peace is when I’m with you,” he murmured. “It’s the only time the hate goes away.”
There was a beat of silence before Bobby whispered, “I’m glad, honey, because you give me that, too.”
He wanted to give her peace, wanted to give her everything she gave him tenfold.
Once again a comfortable silence fell and they thought back over their day. The spectacular wake-up call, the shit phone call from his mom, the confessions. Bobby knew it all or enough to know what she was getting into. There was more Jonny needed to tell her, but that could wait, she had the truth about his family. After Jonny had cleaned up the jar he’d broken and apologized profusely about losing his temper, which she’d surprisingly waved away, he’d taken her out for breakfast. After that, they’d walked the beach, and he’d shown her around Dewey and Rehoboth. There wasn’t much to see, the neighboring towns were both small. A lazy place to take your family.
“Do you want kids?” The question popped out of Jonny’s mouth before he thought better of it.
Without looking Jonny’s way Bobby answered, “I never used to. I mean, what kind of mother would I be?”
A good one, he thought but didn’t tell her that. Instead, he focused on the first part.
“But you do now?”
“I’m not sure. What about you?”
“I played little league baseball and I remember all the dads being out there with their boys. Volunteering, coaching, cheering. Other dads were always around but not mine. To hide how hurt I was, I’d get pissed. One of the dads noticed, pulled me aside, and talked to me. As he was talking to me, I thought when I had a son, that was the kinda dad I was gonna be. I wouldn’t be anything like the one I had. Then I grew up and learned who my dad really was. He wasn’t a workaholic like I’d heard him called, or a good man working hard to provide for his family. He was an asshole who had two families. But I still wanted kids, a son I could play ball with. Then Caleb was born and I changed my mind.”
Jonny's Redemption (Gemini Group Book 7) Page 6