What Comes After Dessert

by Ren Benton

  There were no accidents. A million events had aligned in sequence to bring them together again, to give him a second chance to make her happy, to make her love him enough to stay.

  Last night had been a step in that direction. She’d needed comfort, and she allowed him to give it to her for a change.

  He had no delusions about what that meant, though. Access to her body didn’t include admission to her heart. To progress in that direction, he’d have to keep showing her he would give her anything she needed.

  The trick would be figuring out what that was when she wasn’t reeling and vulnerable enough to tell him herself. He needed an ally who knew her better than anyone else.

  Wayne Castle answered the door, blockading the frame with his forbidding bulk. “She’s at work.”

  “I figured. I came to return your gas can and apologize to you.”

  The older man grimaced. “She’s a grown woman. You don’t need my blessing for whatever you did to her.”

  He limped back into the house, cane thumping against the floor.

  The open door was enough invitation for Ben to follow. He left the gas can on the porch to put away later and took the grocery bag inside. “You never did like me.”

  “She wasn’t always grown. I wanted to castrate every one of you horny little bastards, but you were an especially obnoxious little prick.”

  Ben would have been more respectful toward the father of the girl he loved if he’d known the truth. “Until last night, I thought you were the one giving her the bruises she lied about getting from dance practice.”

  Wayne stopped at the threshold of the kitchen and cast a black look over his shoulder. “Now I don’t like you because you thought I was hitting her and didn’t kick my ass.”

  Ben stopped also, respecting the anger arcing between them, understanding it being aimed toward anyone who failed to protect Tally. “Thought about it a lot. Thought when you were done breaking me like a toothpick, you’d take it out on her. Thought I’d have to kill you to permanently solve the problem, and I wasn’t quite ready to add murder to my list of achievements.”

  “You always did suffer from a lack of commitment.” Appeased that the thought of vengeance had at least been entertained, Wayne continued into the kitchen. “Sit. Join me for a drink.”

  Ben wasn’t about to turn down the man’s hospitality, even if nine in the morning was at least eight hours too early for alcohol. If nothing else, driving safety was a valid excuse to hang out here for a couple of hours.

  A laundry basket half full of tangled clothes occupied most of the surface of the small kitchen table. One of the four chairs was pinned between the table and the wall; piles of folded laundry covered the other three.

  Ben nudged the laundry basket away from the edge to make room for the grocery bag and a stack of lace-trimmed tank tops he assumed did not belong to Wayne and sat on the chair he’d freed up.

  The man of the house swiped a hand over the chalkboard mounted on the wall as he passed it, but not before Ben read Bank empty til payday Couldn’t afford pills written in cursive a calligrapher would envy.

  That could make a trip to the store traumatic.

  Wayne opened the fridge. “You were right about one thing. If her mother thought she told her dirty little secret, she’d have beaten Tally within an inch of her life.”

  Liquid splashed into a glass while Ben concentrated on one of those lacy straps. “I still should have done something. Called the cops.”

  “I tried that once when I finally figured out what was going on. I don’t want to say how long I believed that dance practice crap.”

  Ben looked over to see him squirting a generous amount of chocolate syrup into a tall glass of milk and smiled a little. Here was a man after his own heart. “I take mine shaken, not stirred.”

  “Stupid kid. Shaking bruises all the skim.” He whipped the milk to a froth with a spoon and brought the glass to the table.

  “Much obliged.”

  Wayne flicked the thanks away. “Asked her dance teacher after a competition once if my kid was the only one she beat with a chair, mostly joking. She didn’t know what I was talking about. Said Tally never even fell. ‘A little perfectionist,’ she called her.”

  She colored inside the lines, got a perfect score on every test, kept everything in her care spotless and ruthlessly organized. Ben admired her attention to detail right up to the moment he considered the likelihood it had been beaten into her.

  “Her mother covered her in makeup when a costume didn’t cover the bruises. Hell, how would I know all those tubes in the trash every week could cover a sorority’s worth of zits and hickeys for a year?” He rolled his shoulders as if still trying to shed the consequences of ignorance. “I thought a stay in a cell would impress Bonnie she couldn’t treat a child that way. She said she’d tell the police I molested the girl and make sure I never saw her again.”

  Wayne Castle had been everyone’s friend. Local sports legend. Volunteer firefighter. Mediator. “No one would have believed her.”

  “You were sure enough to contemplate murder without having a witness tell you I was guilty, and she knew how to terrorize that kid to make her say whatever she wanted. They’d have believed her enough to do their job, and she’d have run off with Tally while I was locked up.” He hobbled back to the counter to retrieve his own drink. “If I was here, at least I could get in the way when it happened in front of me.”

  He had a lot more to say on the subject than Tally ever had. Was it his nature to be this chatty, or did it have more to do with the prescription bottle next to the sink?

  “I spent the night in a holding cell for making a false report, and we didn’t talk about it anymore, but it stuck in my head like a knife that every time Tally was out of my sight, she could be taken away from me. I thought it got better after that. Now I think she hid it from me and I was too blind to see it. Again. Like protecting me was her responsibility.” He took a swig from his glass to wash the taste of poison from his mouth.

  Ben had no words of consolation. One monster made them accomplices to abuse and left them holding all the guilt and shame monsters were immune to, taunting them with their inability to protect the one they loved.

  Ben had failed twice — first his mother, then Tally.

  Wayne tapped the cane against his prosthetic leg. “If I’d known this was the price of getting rid of her, I’d have paid it twenty-nine years ago and spared my little girl a lot of misery.”

  “How happy do you think she’d be knowing you gave up a limb for her?”

  “Maybe if I’d gotten her away from Bonnie early enough, her first thought wouldn’t always be everything is her fault.”

  Was that why she was so quick to apologize at the first hint something wasn’t right, even before she knew what had happened, even if she hadn’t been involved in any way and couldn’t be responsible? Kids at school figured out by first grade that if they pointed the finger at Tally, she’d absorb blame like a guilt sponge. It was a nightmare being split into different classes in high school so he couldn’t look out for her and expose the lying bastards, which Tally would never do.

  Even when everything was perfect, she was hypervigilant, waiting for disaster to strike so she’d be prepared to shoulder the responsibility for it — the legacy her mother had left her.

  “What’s in the bag?”

  Ben had the foresight to leave the condoms in the glove compartment after restocking his wallet. One did not announce one’s dream of putting one’s penis in daddy’s little girl, no matter how grown she was, and expect to avoid an ass kicking. “Thanks-for-the-gas, sorry-I-thought-you-were-an-abusive-asshole steaks.”

  Wayne hooked a finger in one strap of the bag and investigated the contents. “Been a while since I’ve seen slabs of meat that size. It would be a shame to throw those beauties on a plate all by their lonesome.”

  It could be argued that Ben owed him the use of a full tank of gas. Besides, he wanted to make s
ure he was invited to dinner. “What did you have in mind?”

  Chapter 16

  Tally expected the bakery to be robbed or vandalized by the previous evening’s circler, but when she arrived at work, everything was as she left it. The rest of the day progressed as had every other day for the past two years, complete with bellyaching buzzer and sanctimonious customers who paid for their bread with contempt.

  No one who’d given her an orgasm recently stopped by to say hello — thank god. When she got up that morning and confronted her reflection in the bathroom mirror, the grimy smudge on her forehead from last night’s housekeeping dosed her with the full daily allowance of embarrassment. She’d had semi-sex with the cutest boy in town while wearing a flannel tent, a dingy granny bra, cheap panties, and dirt on her face, to put the cherry on the top of his slumming experience. Not having to look him in the eye after that was a rare and welcome blessing.

  She closed up shop and drove home. When she stepped out of the truck, the scent of charcoal-seared meat sidled over and rubbed against her like a drunk at a club. If she found out which neighbor was responsible for the torment, she’d throw a drink in his face.

  She locked the truck and strolled to the house with her nose in the air, the better to suck up every whiff of renegade smoke. Her dad should have opened the windows to reap the benefits of free aromatherapy for carnivores.

  That oversight on his part trapped a different mouthwatering fragrance in the house. She cracked open the oven and found her dad’s mac-and-twenty-dollars-of-cheese bubbling in a casserole dish, just starting to tan on top. Her mother had forbidden her to eat it because she’d get fat, but her dad would find an excuse to drive her to school the morning after and smuggle her a container of leftovers. Even cold, it was the most amazing thing she had ever put in her mouth.

  They didn’t eat it now that the calorie police had departed because it was a one-dish budget buster. Where had all that cheese come from?

  Ditto for the case of Diet Pepsi, green apples, walnuts, dried cranberries, and the tower of little plastic boxes of raspberries filling up the middle shelf of the refrigerator.

  Anxiety clanged in her chest as she added up the bill. Unless they’d won the lottery, they couldn’t afford to eat this much money. And how had he gotten it all without the truck? If he’d taken the orthopedist’s pills, broken into someone’s house, and raided their refrigerator, she would never forgive herself for turning him into a criminal. “Dad?”

  He didn’t answer, and a quick search of the house didn’t flush him out. She went out the back door, hoping he’d struck oil while digging up a treasure chest full of gold doubloons to explain the bounty.

  He stood over the rusty charcoal grill next to Ben, tending the source of that tormenting smell.

  The sight kicked the bottom out of her emotional reserves and left her empty. She spent the entire day forcing her mind out of daydreams and back to reality every time the door buzzer sounded and she raced to the front of the bakery to see someone other than the reason her heart had accelerated, telling herself over and over and over again he knew where to find her and obviously had nothing to say to her and she’d been right last night: he was a one-time aberration.

  So why was the aberration in her space, making a meal, laughing with her dad like he belonged here and this was normal?

  This was a vacation for him. He would leave, what happened in Westard would stay in Westard, and she would have to stay right here and live with it.

  Or rather, without it.

  He looked up, and his smile when he saw her pushed dusk back a good fifteen minutes.

  Her father noticed her arrival, too. “Good, you’re home. Tell Ben you like your meat hard enough to hammer nails.”

  She bit her lip and directed her eyes skyward. Now even her father was in on the pervasive filth.

  “He thinks everybody likes it raw.”

  Nope. She spun around and yanked the door open.

  “Make some of your riddle salad to go with dinner!”

  Yes. A task. Do something, keep busy, go through the motions and concentrate on not making a mistake instead of trying to figure out a puzzle she was too dense to comprehend.

  She retrieved the makings of the salad from the refrigerator. The apples lacked the customary waxy gleam. Who could afford to pay an extra buck-fifty a pound for organic — and drove all the way to Marion to find them?

  An aberration, that’s who.

  She washed the apples extra conscientiously to compensate for the absence of bug- and germ-slaying chemicals.

  In a mixing bowl, she whipped together a blob of Miracle Whip, a spoonful of sugar, a splash of apple cider vinegar, and a little bit of milk. She threw in a handful of walnuts and some dried cranberries and applied herself to chopping the apples.

  Ben stepped through the back door and inhaled theatrically. “Someone should bottle the smell of that mac and sell it as air freshener. Or cologne. Guys would be getting eaten alive.”

  Other guys — the only lure Ben had ever required to get a girl to bite was the hook of his grin.

  She forced her gaze back to the cutting board before she nibbled at the bait. “What are the raspberries for?”

  He snatched a chunk of apple from under her knife. “Wayne said you liked them.”

  Did he also say I don’t buy them because ounce for ounce, they cost as much as caviar?

  Her dad had found a cash cow and milked it hard. But what right did she have to judge after her exorbitant ripoff on cookies? Taking advantage ran in the family.

  At least her dad hadn’t used Ben for sex after cleaning out his wallet.

  Wayne brought in a platter loaded with steaks and carried it through the kitchen to the dining room. Ben slipped his hands into her threadbare oven mitts and transferred the mac and cheese to the table. Tally followed with the salad.

  The dining room had last been used for dining in the days when her mother forced them to participate in her normal-family fantasy. These days, Tally ate over the sink, her dad in his recliner or, when his carrying capacity was limited by the cane, at the kitchen table.

  In honor of their guest, the big table was laid out not only with plates, glasses, and flatware but also decorated with candles and a bouquet of mixed flowers stuck in an iced tea glass. The room looked like a movie set, waiting for the actors to take their places.

  Ben pulled out a chair. When he and her father remained standing, she realized that was her cue to perform. Scriptless, guessing at the stage directions, she sat in the chair Ben lurked behind. He moved to the other side of the table. Her dad pried the bowl out of her hands and placed the salad between the meat and pasta. All the props now in their designated places, the men took their positions and tucked into the food.

  Tally carved a sliver from the most thoroughly cooked slab of beef. If she exercised some self-control, her leftovers could feed the two of them for the rest of the week. Throw a little bit in with rice and broccoli. Fajitas if there were any peppers left in the garden.

  If she gave in to the urge to pick up the entire thing and cram it into her mouth with both hands, there wouldn’t be any to enjoy later. If she behaved herself, she could make it last a little while longer.

  Her dad stopped bonding with his new buddy long enough to observe, “You’re being awfully quiet, princess.”

  Don’t you realize this is an aberration? It’s not real.

  “She doesn’t have to play the charming hostess on my account.”

  If she had more control of her body, she would kiss Ben for giving her permission to be paralyzed.

  He used his fork as a pointer. “Why do you call this riddle salad?”

  Food was a neutral topic. She could answer that question without disturbing the cushion of numbness smothering her.

  So why wouldn’t her mouth work?

  Her father shot her a look full of worry and responded for her. “How do you make an apple six hundred calories?” He hoisted a fork full of the an
swer.

  Ben took another bite. “When I end up on an extreme weight loss show, I’m blaming it on you people.”

  “I told you he’d be fat.”

  “‘Scuse me, old man?”

  The men cleaned their plates and then cleared the table. In the kitchen, they bickered companionably over which one of them would do the dishes while they did the dishes.

  Tally listened from the picture-perfect dining room.

  Her father was more lively than she’d seen him in months, and she doubted a surplus of quality food or narcotic medication deserved all the credit.

  He’s leaving, Dad. Don’t get used to him. It’ll hurt worse than anything you can imagine when he’s gone.

  She stared at the hands clenched in her lap, back bowed under the weight of guilt for being a jerk to the person responsible for the best part of her day.

  She flinched at the touch of fingers against her shoulder. Her gaze traveled up the arm they were attached to, to the face of the person responsible for the best parts of her life.

  Ben gave her the same lopsided grin he offered people who weren’t being jerks to him. “Walk me out?”

  She overcame the paralysis to get to her feet, but they’d reached the porch before she found her voice, which had fractured in its absence. “I’m so sorry, Ben.”

  “Don’t be.” His knuckles brushed the back of her hand. “You look like you’ve been awake forever.”

  Not what a girl wanted to hear — ever — but she could always count on him to be honest. “That’s no excuse for how rude I’ve been.”

  “I didn’t come here to make you perform a polite routine for me, Tal.”

  The gray outlines where the light from the window clung to him blurred, but softening his edges didn’t make his kindness cut less deep. Why was he so damn nice even when she was awful? “Why did you come?”

  “To make peace with your dad. To repay you for the ride to Sterling. To look at your face.”

  Her awake-forever face, wrapped around her bunched-up forehead and her pulled-down mouth, looking more like her mother every day. She barely looked at it herself anymore. At least her dad hadn’t turned on the porch light yet. Darkness could hide a multitude of physical faults.