She nodded. “Go ahead. It’s not like there’s anybody else gonna need the table at this hour.”
As she walked away, Justin rubbed his eyes tiredly. “Okay, here’s the deal. The way I see it, the sooner we stop and find work of some kind, the sooner we can afford a place to stay and something to eat.” He raised a weary gaze to Tess. “So how does Samson, Arkansas, strike you as a new home?”
She reached for his hand and laced her fingers with his. “My home is wherever you are.”
He quirked a small smile. “Then Samson it is. Now, how about we get some rest?”
“Where?”
“When you were a little girl, were you ever a Girl Scout?”
Tess frowned and shook her head. “We didn’t have a lot of money, and the Girl Scouts weren’t a priority.”
“Well, then, I guess tonight will be your first experience camping under the stars.” Smiling, he opened the backpack to show her the quilt he’d brought from the church rummage sale items. “We can throw this down on the ground in the woods behind the motel. It’s a pretty night. Perfect for camping.”
Meeting his eyes, she stroked his cheek. “Ah, Justin, who else would take a situation as bleak as being homeless and call it camping under the stars? You make hunger and poverty sound like a romantic vacation.”
“Attitude is everything.” He tweaked her nose and slid out of the booth. “Let’s go. I’m bushed.”
On the way out, she spied the restroom and grabbed his arm. “Hang on. Nature calls.”
“Again?” Justin shook his head. “Women.”
While Tess availed herself of the facilities, Justin browsed through the postcards in a tiny stand by the checkout counter. He found one that had a picture of a National Historic Monument in Samson. He wanted so much to send Brian a card, to let him know he was all right.
He’d sworn to Morelli not to let anyone know he was alive. But that was before the phone call.
I told you to kill Dominic!
Morelli was probably already looking for them. He rubbed the back of his neck and tried to stay calm. He wouldn’t let Tess know. Yet. She deserved some peace of mind.
He glanced at the cards again, and an idea formed in his mind. Digging in his pocket, he found the change left over from the sandwiches he’d bought at the truck stop. He had enough for the postcard but not quite enough for a stamp, too. He looked up to find the waitress watching him with something akin to pity in her eyes.
“Not enough for the stamp.” He shrugged and put the card back. “So what’s the point?”
“I’ve got a stamp, if that’s all you need.” She reached under the front counter and pulled out a large purse. After fishing around for a moment, she pulled out a tiny change purse and, finally, a dirty but functional stamp.
Justin gave her a bright smile of thanks. Slapping the change for the postcard on the counter, he reclaimed the card from the rack.
After sticking the stamp on the blank postcard, he addressed it to Brian in block letters and handed it to the waitress. “Would you mind dropping that in the mail for me?”
“Aren’t you going to write anything on it?” she asked, giving Justin a quizzical glance.
“Nope. He’ll get the message.”
When Tess came back from the bathroom, they crossed the road, hand in hand, and hiked into the woods until they couldn’t see the lights of the motel anymore. He took the quilt from the backpack, and they spread it out over a pine needle carpet.
She settled on the makeshift bed. “So I take it you were a Boy Scout?”
He carefully stretched out on his back, favoring the side where his stitches were. “Naw, not me.”
“But you’ve been camping, right?” She rolled on her side and peered through the inky darkness.
Justin stacked his hands under his head. “Brian and I used to camp out plenty when I was a kid. He’s nine years older, so by the time I was old enough to camp with him, he was already in high school. He always acted more like a second father than an older brother. He was real serious, all business most of the time. But when we’d camp, he’d act more like my brother, a friend, a kid. I loved it.”
“Did Rebecca ever go with you?”
“Are you kidding? She was a girl!”
Tess grunted. “So?”
He laughed. “Eight-year-old boys don’t want their sister camping with them. Besides, that was my special time with Bri.”
“So when did you and Rebecca get close?”
Justin took a deep breath. “After Brian went off to A&M, and Rebecca started thinking she was going to be the next Loretta Lynn. She gave me my guitar for Christmas the year I was ten, and she began training me to be in her backup band.” He chuckled. “We practiced and practiced until Dad got worried that I’d be a wimp, because I didn’t play as much baseball as the other kids on the block.”
“What are your parents like?” A note of wonder colored her voice, and he remembered that she had lost her parents at a comparatively young age.
“Dad is like Brian. All business, very serious. I think I told you he owns a hardware store?” He tipped his head toward her, and she nodded. “Mom is the buffer in the family, always trying to bridge differences and keep the peace. We didn’t fight any more than I’d imagine any family does, but it was always about the same things. Dad wanted me to buckle down and get serious about schoolwork and ‘real life.’ He thought I had my head in the clouds when I talked about Nashville. By the time Rebecca was sixteen, she was constantly battling Dad over curfews and dating. Typical stuff.”
“Mmm.” Tess rolled on her back and stared up at the sky through the branches of the trees. “Did you ever work for your dad?”
“Summers in high school and college. Then I worked construction jobs up until the day I headed out for Nashville. That was right after Mac’s trial ended. I had nothing left to keep me in town. Except Amy. But she didn’t support my ideas about Nashville, and we finally broke up.”
The stillness beside him gave away the track of Tess’s thoughts. He found her hand and brought her fingers to his lips. “She’s history, babe. You are my future.” He glanced at her sideways. “You want kids, don’t you? I’ve always seen myself having a large family.”
Her breath caught. “Children? Oh, yes. I want your children.”
He heard the tears in her voice. “You okay? Did I say something wrong?”
“I’ve ruined your life, taken away your dreams, and you’re talking about having children.” She sucked in a deep breath. “You don’t have to stay with me if you’d rather not. I’ll be okay. I don’t want you to feel like you have to—”
“I love you, Tess.”
He heard her fight for a breath. “What?”
“You heard me. I love you.” He rolled to face her and dragged a finger along her jaw. “I’m not going anywhere. You haven’t ruined my life. You gave it meaning. I may have forced my way into your life because of Rebecca, because I thought I had to make amends to her, but I stayed because I fell in love with you. It’s senseless to deny it.”
“Oh, Justin—”
He put a finger over her lips. “I can’t promise I won’t ever disappoint you, and God knows you deserve better than I can afford to give you right now. I don’t know if I have what it takes to build a life with you. But I have to try. I can’t walk away. You mean too much to me not to try.”
In the moonlight, he saw tears shimmer in her eyes. “You’ve already given me more than I dreamed possible. All I need is your love, Justin. Just your love.”
Leaning down, he pressed a kiss to her cheek. “Done.” He wiped away a tear that trickled down her cheek. “You okay?”
“I’m fine. I was just thinking how strange it was that I had to die, so to speak, to have the life I’ve always wanted.”
Drawing her into his arms, he cradled her head against his chest. “Funny how facing death makes you take stock of your life, when in reality, we face death every day.”
Winding his f
ingers through her hair, he closed his eyes. In his mind’s eye, he saw the face of the last little girl he’d played for at the hospital and the smile she’d worn. His heart hammered at the memory. He remembered what Tess had said to him earlier that morning about refocusing his energy, and the feeling he’d known when he played for the freckle-faced girl at the hospital stirred to life again.
Cheering up the little girl had made him feel good, had given him a sense of purpose and direction. Giving her something of himself had ministered to his own dying spirit.
At the beginning, helping Tess had been a means to assuage his guilt over Becca. The feelings that had blossomed between them had changed his motivation for helping her but hadn’t been the most significant change he’d experienced.
Seeing Tess struggle with the emotional scars of her marriage took his involvement to a deeper level. Watching her overcome the inner battles she faced, one step at a time, gave him a gratification and pride that rivaled anything in his past. She’d done the hard work, of course, peeling away the layers of garbage that Randall had imposed on her and uncovering the gem inside. But he didn’t discount his contribution to her growth. He knew he’d given her the tools to find herself.
Although she still had discoveries to make, the “tampon incident,” as he liked to think of it, proved she’d come a long way. She’d finally begun to discover her self-confidence and shed the cloak of intimidation and doubt. Breaking her emotional chains took more courage than walking out the door on Randall.
The surprise he’d received in witnessing her progress was the satisfaction that now filled his heart. Before, only his music had filled the void left by Becca’s death.
Lying there under the stars, he considered for the first time that his healing would come not from living to make amends for the past, but from building a brighter future. He couldn’t change things for Rebecca, but he could make a difference for women like Tess. He could use his music to bring joy to people who needed hope in their dark lives, like the dying girl at the hospital.
He tensed, clutching Tess tighter as something inside him shifted, pointing his life in a new direction, showing him his world in a new light.
His music wasn’t the goal. It was the means.
His talent was more than a gift to exploit. It was a responsibility and a tool. Reaching people, touching lives, sharing hope was what his soul cried for. His dream hadn’t died when they’d gone underground. It had transformed.
“Justin? What is it?”
“That’s what I want to be remembered for,” he murmured.
“What? Justin, what are you talking about?”
“Rebecca didn’t die in vain, Tess. Not if I can tell other women about her and wake them up to the reality of domestic abuse.”
She angled her head to peer up at him, and her soft breath caressed his face. “How?”
“However I can. I’m taking your advice, honey. I’m refocusing my energy on what matters. People matter. Hope matters.” He ducked his head and brushed her lips. “You matter.”
“You know what I think?” She nestled closer, and his body answered with an acute awareness of every inch of contact between them.
“What?” he asked, his voice a little husky.
“I think your decision would have made Rebecca very proud.”
***
Justin and Tess spent the first day of their new life in Arkansas walking from business to business, asking for work and filling out applications. Because they had no references, no Social Security cards, and no address to list, the hope of finding work began to look dim. Justin even knocked on several doors in a small neighborhood near the interstate and offered to mow lawns. He had one taker, a kid who saw Justin’s offer as the golden opportunity to get out of the job he hated. The kid paid Justin twenty of the twenty-five dollars he said his parents would pay him. The twenty dollars bought their dinner and another box of tampons for Tess.
After their second night of camping, they wandered out of the woods and into the bright morning sunlight, blinking and stretching the kinks from their backs and legs.
Justin plucked a leaf from Tess’s hair and speculated aloud on their best options for follow-up visits on their applications. A man’s shouts drew her attention to the sidewalk behind the run-down motel where the truck driver had slept. The thin, balding man yelled at a woman dressed in a housekeeping uniform. From the snippets Tess caught, he’d worked himself into a tizzy about the woman’s tardiness and her general lack of responsibility.
At first, Tess watched with almost a morbid fascination, because she empathized with the woman, because the shouts held her nearly paralyzed in remembrance.
“Tess? What’s wrong?” When Justin spotted the man and woman, his body tensed. He started forward, but Tess put a hand on his arm.
“Wait,” she whispered, noting the negligent way the woman leaned against the side of the motel and ignored the man’s ranting.
“This is the third time this week you’ve been late.” The man’s face grew redder as he shouted. “If I wasn’t desperate for help, what with the regional manager coming later, I’d fire you on the spot!”
The woman gave her boss a bored look.
“Not only that, three customers complained last night that their rooms were dirty. One even said the sink was full of someone else’s hair. You have to be more thorough!”
“You want it done better, then do it yourself!” she snapped then stalked off.
“Crista, come back here! You can’t just leave like that! Crista! I won’t give you a good reference!”
Justin started toward the road again, but Tess grabbed the back of his shirt. “Justin, wait! This is just what we’ve been looking for. The man said he was desperate for help. I can clean a motel room, and maybe we could get a room where we can stay thrown in as part of my salary.”
Smiling her excitement, she saw Justin raise his gaze to the balding man. His eyes brightened. “Why not?”
She hustled across the parking lot with Justin at her heels. “Excuse me, sir,” she called, “but I couldn’t help overhearing your discussion with that woman about your need for help.”
“I’m sorry. Did we wake you?” He smoothed a hand over his bald spot.
“No, nothing like that. I was hoping you’d consider hiring me to clean for you. I need the work badly, and I’ll be thorough and quick and—”
“You’re hired.” An expression of immense relief crossed the man’s face. He turned to Justin. “How about you? Are you willing to change sheets and vacuum? I’ll pay you each two hundred dollars a week. ”
Justin’s eyes widened in surprise at the suggestion that he clean motel rooms, too.
Tess grinned. “How about it, cowboy? A little domestic work never killed a man.”
Grimacing, he arched an eyebrow. At the same time, his mind raced. Two hundred a week was slave wages, but if they were paid under the table, so to speak, there’d be no paper trail. “Pay us in cash and throw in a free motel room, and you’ve got a deal.”
The motel manager’s eyes widened, then he nodded. “Follow me. You can start right now. My regional manager is coming later today, and I need the place to be in top form. Oh yeah, my name’s Jim Beam, and no, I’m not kidding. My mother didn’t drink, so she didn’t know what she’d done to me until it was too late.”
The man expelled a frazzled sigh, and Tess glanced at Justin, who was working to hide an amused grin. “And you two are?”
“Jus—”
“David,” Tess interrupted, before Justin could finish. Both Justin and Jim Beam looked at her with curious expressions. She cleared her throat and squared her shoulders. “David and Mary . . . Camper.” She held out a hand to Jim, and he shook it.
Justin muffled a chuckle, and she elbowed him. Fortunately, she poked him in his good side, since she realized her mistake too late to recover the jab.
Jim shook Justin’s hand, too, then turned to lead them to the office.
“Camper?”
Justin asked under his breath.
“It was the first thing I thought of, okay?”
“Okay, Mary.” He grinned and followed their new employer inside.
***
“I have a healthy new respect for housewives who do this every day.” Justin dropped onto the bed in their motel room and heaved a tired sigh. They’d cleaned several rooms, dividing the chores and conquering the work in an organized and efficient manner.
Justin made the beds, vacuumed the floors, and emptied the trash, while Tess, who drew the short straw, cleaned the bathrooms.
“Housewives only have one house to clean. We cleaned the equivalent of three or four whole houses today.” Tess propped herself up on the bed next to Justin, who flipped on the TV and clicked through the channels. He stopped briefly on a music video channel and watched a man in a black cowboy hat sing about watching the taillights of his woman’s car fade in the night.
Justin sighed again and changed the channel.
Though he said nothing, she could see the pain in his eyes, and she shared a longing ache for what he’d given up. He stopped on a cartoon and watched absently for a minute.
“I just don’t get it,” he said suddenly. “Coyote keeps on buying stuff from Acme, even though every single device he’s ever ordered from them has backfired or not worked in some way. If he’s stupid enough to keep buying things from a sorry company like that, he doesn’t deserve to catch the Roadrunner.”
Tess furrowed her brow. “Pardon me?”
“Coyote and Roadrunner. Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of them?”
“Yeah, I guess I remember them from when I was a kid. I just never analyzed them to such an extent.” She grinned up at Justin, and he smiled back. As always, Justin’s attitude was good, his teasing in place.
“Well, think about it. Has anything Coyote ever bought worked like it was supposed to?”
Tess rolled on her side and swung one leg over his. “I’d rather think about you.” She kissed him on the chest and trailed roaming lips down the plane of his stomach. Justin sucked in a sharp breath and turned off the TV.
Chasing a Dream Page 24