by Liz Talley
“I’m lonely. I should have fought for Millard. I shouldn’t have let him walk away.”
Addy pulled her hand from her aunt’s. “That’s about your regret. Not mine.”
“So you’re going to give up on love? On having a family? On-”
“Wait,” Addy interrupted, pushing her chair back as anger flooded her. “Who says having kids makes you happy? Or getting married for that matter? There are plenty of strong, successful single women living their lives on their own terms.”
“Sure.” Aunt Flora shrugged. “I’m one of them, but don’t you think for one little minute that if I could go back in time, I wouldn’t throw Millard O’Boyle onto that worktable and make him mine. And I wouldn’t have slunk away and allowed him to walk away from me. I didn’t fight for the life I wanted, Addy. Don’t be me.”
Addy shook her head. “I’m not. I’m me. I don’t need a man to make me happy.”
“No, you don’t, but I want you to think about who you are and what you want. Don’t settle for what’s easy… for what’s safe.”
Addy bit her lip against further argument. Aunt Flora was good at probing her psyche and sliding her into uncomfortable rooms in her soul. Why couldn’t Flora have forgotten to be smart… instead of where she hid the Christmas gifts they still couldn’t find?
When Addy didn’t answer, Flora rose, her back cracking in protest. “Well, love, I’m off to have a bath and put on my jammies. Those kids are fun, but, woo, they’re a handful.”
“I appreciate you taking them and giving me and Lucas some time together.”
“If that flush on your cheeks is any indication, it was worth every bit of my aching bunion.”
“I’m not kissing and telling.”
“I hope to hell it was more than kissing. I’ve got corns, too.” Flora swooshed out the kitchen door leaving Addy to shut down the house. She pushed the chairs in, double-checked the dead bolt on the back door, and turned the light off in the kitchen—all the while mulling over Flora’s words. Maybe the older woman had a point, but then again maybe it wasn’t a worthwhile one. Flora hadn’t held Addy back from taking the life she wanted.
Addy had held herself back.
As she walked to check the front door, her eyes landed on the small box that had been delivered earlier.
Who made deliveries on Sunday?
Maybe it was a second order of floral wire that had been mistakenly delivered even though she’d called them and double-checked the correct address of her shop. Definitely wasn’t from Amazon.
Sliding a nail beneath the clear tape, she ripped the box open. Inside there was bubble wrap. A creepy feeling slithered down her spine as she carefully lifted the plastic.
Lying on the bottom of the square box were several photographs. Addy swallowed panic as she lifted the color prints toward the weak light of the foyer sconces.
The first was a photo of her climbing from her car, taken in broad daylight outside her shop. She wore the gray jumper she’d worn last week.
The second had been taken from inside her car. Whoever had taken the photo had slid behind the wheel and taken a picture of the shop’s rear door. But that was impossible—she always locked her car. Always.
Except one day last week it had been open when she finished for the day. She’d thought she’d left it unlocked. But she hadn’t. Someone had jimmied the lock… and she’d slid into the same spot he’d occupied.
The last picture chilled her to the bone. It had been taken last Sunday night. She stood in her robe, arms crossed in the darkness, framed against the darkness of the camellia bushes. Her face had been highlighted by the security lights outside the Finlay house, and she could just make out the side of Michael and the basketball.
Addy’s hands shook so hard she dropped one of the photos.
And then she dropped the other two.
Her legs gave out and she sank onto the floor, shaking so hard, the only sound in the house was Aunt Flora’s television and the sound of enamel hitting enamel as she wrapped her arms around herself and squeezed her eyes shut.
She’d failed herself. She’d thought she could sense danger, but she hadn’t. Someone had been right there and she’d not known it.
Terror overwhelmed her, and she curled into a ball, tight as she could make herself as photographs did exactly as intended.
Robbie Guidry wasn’t out of prison yet, but he could still get to her.
The message was clear.
He would come.
Another Monday morning, but somehow this one didn’t seem as bad. After surviving the stomach flu with his nephews and niece and spending a very nice weekend flirting, laughing, and making love, Lucas felt as if the world was his oyster.
No, even better than an oyster.
And he wasn’t going to let that weird conversation he’d had with Addy right before the kids and Flora came home ruin it for him.
After he’d successfully dropped the kids at school, managing to navigate carpool like a seasoned pro, he stopped off for coffee and headed to the Bywater District armed with his cameras. The light was perfect for some morning shots. Would have been better as the sun rose, but he’d take what he could get.
Humming a ZZ Top classic, he found a parking place and had just started surveying decent vantage points when his phone rang.
Courtney.
“Hey, the kids are alive and well,” he said, not without a good deal of cheer.
“That’s the least of your problems” the voice said.
“Ben?”
“Who the hell do you think it is?” His brother’s voice was guarded… and angry.
“Actually since this is Courtney’s number, I thought it was her.”
“I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but it stops now. Mom and Dad are headed back, and we don’t need you there any longer.” More than anger. Suspicion.
Lucas slung a camera over his shoulder and walked back to his truck. Several people sitting on their porches had turned to stare at him, and he didn’t want to have the delicate conversation with an audience.
“I have no motives, Ben. Your wife called me, and I said I would help. It was time for me to know your children.”
A snort. “Yeah, past time. Well, we’ve gone this long without your presence, so….”
“Where’s Courtney?”
“None of your goddamned business,” Ben said, anger roaring into his voice, shaded by something uglier. “And you better keep your goddamn hands off her and my family. I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but you can forget about it. You are dead to me. You are dead to my family. You hear?”
In the background Lucas heard Courtney and then his father. Courtney yelled at Ben and the line clicked, losing the connection.
Lucas pressed the end button, feeling blindsided. What the hell? Ben should be grateful he’d come to help when Courtney called. His brother had been the one to screw up, and that he tried to paint Lucas as some kind of home wrecker, pissed him off. Lucas wasn’t after sloppy seconds.
So his brother could kiss his ass.
The phone rang again, interrupting his thoughts. “Yeah?”
“Sorry about that,” Courtney said, her voice steeped in aggravation. “I had to fill out paperwork and left my phone behind.”
Lucas didn’t respond.
“He’s just dealing with a lot of anger right now. We both owe you, and I’m sorry he acted like an asshole.”
Yeah, anger and jealously could eat a hole in a man—or it could find a home, knotting up, implanting in the lining of the soul. “He needs someone to blame for the shit life has handed him, and an older brother with questionable motives is handy.”
“Are your motives questionable?” He couldn’t read her voice, no longer knew her, so he couldn’t tell the intent behind the question. Maybe she thought Lucas helped her in order to insinuate himself into her life, maybe she wondered if Lucas still loved her.
But he didn’t love Courtney any longer. “I don
’t have motives, but a man hurt by life imagines every shadow a threat.”
Courtney didn’t respond to him. Silence squatted on the line between them. Easier to change the subject. “I talked to Mom last night. She said they had him up and moving yesterday.”
“Yeah, they’d started physical therapy before he got so sick with the infection and he’s doing well. Physically, he tires easily, but considering how sick he was days ago, it’s a miraculous recovery.”
The doctors called it a miracle.
Lucas’s mother called it merely Ben being Ben. His younger brother always had a flair for drama, even when at death’s door. Sort of like Chris.
Though Lucas had been relieved to hear his brother had made such quick recovery, the thought of facing Ben created a storm of emotion inside him. He still wasn’t sure how he felt about the man who had stolen the life he’d built in his head and lived it out with the woman Lucas had once loved.
And Lucas wasn’t sure how he felt about leaving Addy.
Never had he contemplated a life anywhere but Texas. The open, rambling life suited him, so why did he feel empty when he thought about going back to the man he was? What had changed him?
He had no answers
“Any idea when you’ll come home?” he asked.
“Unbelievably, we’re coming home Saturday afternoon. We’ll catch a flight into the air station at Belle Chasse.”
“Do I need to pick y’all up?”
“No, your parents are flying down Thursday or Friday, so they’ll be there to help with the kids. You’re pretty much off the hook.”
He leaned back on the truck, giving a nod to an older gentleman walking by, his motley dog snuffing through the weeds grown lanky at the wall of a corner bar. “I’m inferring you don’t want me around when you arrive?”
“I assumed you needed to get back to your life.”
Something hot and bitter flooded him. They no longer needed him so they were done with him. Both Courtney and Ben wanted him to slink away, fade into the horizon never to be seen or heard of again. Just like before.
But it wasn’t just like before.
Courtney had changed everything when she’d called him and begged him to come to New Orleans. Sending him back to his relegated place in their lives would be like putting toothpaste back inside a tube. Wasn’t going to happen… and trying would make one hell of a mess.
Deep down Lucas knew he’d been changed by Michael, Chris, and Charlotte. He’d wiped their tears, scrubbed their faces, and caught their laughter in his hand, inhaling it, creating a place in his heart for them. He wasn’t going to leave their life and never come back. He wasn’t going to resume invisible uncle status again.
No more being sidelined. “I’m not going home without talking to you and Ben about what happened between us.”
Again silence sat heavy for a few seconds.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“You know what I mean. It’s time we dealt with what happened years ago, Courtney. Surely you didn’t think I would come to your house, build a relationship with your children, and then slip away like some stranger in the night. How fair is that to Michael or Chris? Even Charlotte likes me now.”
“You intentionally forgot about us, Lucas, or had you forgotten the silence between us was your choice?” Courtney’s voice rose in aggravation. “You wouldn’t forgive us and you built that wall. Not us. But I don’t think now is a good time to deal with what stands between us. Ben is going through a lot of emotional baggage with the loss of his leg. He’s angry, grieving, and still recuperating. Maybe later in the summer… when he’s better.”
Lucas understood her need to protect his brother, but every instinct in his gut told him now was the time. “No, I’m not waiting any longer to settle things between me and him. His injury has proven people can’t continue to put off words that need to be spoken, thinking there will be a tomorrow. So, I will be here when Ben comes home. Then I’ll go back to Texas. But things will be different.”
Courtney took a deep breath. “Please, Lucas. Don’t rock this boat. Not now.”
“The bill is due.”
“We’ve waited almost thirteen years. Surely, we can-”
“-stop being idiots,” Lucas finished. Until that moment he didn’t know what he wanted, but suddenly the windshield wipers to his soul kicked in, clearing off the gunk preventing him from seeing who he was. He didn’t know if it was because of what he’d faced with the children who’d never seen him before or if it was because Addy had stepped out of her own sheltered world to be with him. But something had changed him. “Let Ben be angry. Let him hate me. But we’re going to talk.”
“Fine. You do what you must, but please remember that he’s fragile.”
“But he’s not broken, and maybe if his anger burns out, if he and I can find a better place with each other, he can heal from the past and focus his energies on his future. I know I will feel a hell of a lot better saying what I need to say to you both.”
“Shit,” she breathed. “Closure is over-rated, Lucas.”
“I’d like to find out,” he said.
“Fine. See you this weekend.”
Lucas hung up, swung his camera forward, and walked purposefully toward a small apostolic church across the street from Mabel’s Jazz Club. The light streamed through the elaborate iron cross affixed to the top, making a long shadow against the old street. The name of the street sat in chipped tiles at the top of the shot. It would make a nice print… and he knew what he’d call it… Redemption.
Addy watched the clock tick on the wall of her shop and tried to remember how to breathe. Ten minutes until noon and her father still hadn’t called.
“You’re making me jump out of my skin,” Shelia said, glancing at the clock Addy kept watching. “That hour hand isn’t going to magically move.”
Addy looked at her friend. “What?”
“I know it’s a bad day, sugar, but you’ve got to work through this. You knew Robbie would get out. Think about what we talk about in group therapy. Handle what you can handle. Control what you can control. Be smart. Be aware. But live your life.”
“I know but saying it and feeling it are two different things. Robbie will come after me, Shelia, and I don’t know when it will be. Maybe tonight or next week or next year. But he’s not going to forget about me. Oh, my God.” Addy sank onto a stool, trying to beat back the panic, but failing. She gasped for air, sucking in the smell of sphagnum moss and funeral parlor.
Shelia rushed over and wrapped an arm around Addy’s shoulders. “Come on now, Addy. Deep breath, clear your mind, and remember you are stronger now than you were before.”
Addy pushed against her friend. “You don’t understand. All that crap I’d been convinced would save me—that inner awareness of danger—it isn’t true. Listening to yourself doesn’t work.”
“Yes, it does, honey. Being aware and heeding your intuition is part of your natural protection.”
“He sent someone to take pictures of me, Shelia, and I never knew it. I never felt unsafe or had any prickling of awareness. Don’t you get it? I failed myself.”
Her friend’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean ‘took pictures’?”
“I found several photos in a box on my porch. At first I didn’t realize the box wasn’t FedEx, so I didn’t open it immediately because Lucas and I were having lunch together. But last night I remembered. No postage and no prints. I called Andre, and he came over to procure the evidence. He’s as frustrated as I am because we can’t do anything with it. All circumstantial, and we can’t prove Robbie’s behind this.”
“Wait. Pictures of what?”
“Of me. Here at the shop, in my car, and at home in my nightgown when I went out to check on Michael one night. Flagrant intimidation.”
“How’s he doing these things?”
“One of his friends on the outside?” Addy shrugged and tried to tuck her trembling fingers in her smock pockets.
&nbs
p; “You know he’s just trying to get in your head.”
“It’s working.”
“What did Lucas say?”
Addy turned away. “I haven’t told him, and frankly it’s none of his business.”
“You haven’t told him about Robbie?”
“I told him about the attack, but not about the ‘gifts’ he sends every now and then. Or that Robbie might be granted parole today.”
“You got a big cowboy living next door, one who cares about you I might add, and you don’t tell him about this scum trying to scare you? Are you plain stupid?” Shelia never minced words—it was something Addy loved and hated about her.
“No, but I didn’t want to throw my issues at him when we first met. For one thing, he was a stranger.”
Shelia harrumphed.
“Okay, fine, I didn’t want him to know I come with that kind of baggage. Acknowledging the sicko in my life who never really went away makes it too real. Not being able to stop Robbie from sending me this shit, for crippling me with fear, makes me feel weak. Makes me feel less than what I should be. I didn’t want to be that woman to Lucas.”
“And telling him would have sent Lucas running the other way?”
“Maybe.” But even she wasn’t convinced by her doubt.
“Well, then he ain’t the man for you, is he?”
“You ask too many questions,” Addy said, inhaling a deep breath and blowing out. “I’m tired of people seeing me as a victim. I didn’t want Lucas to look at me that way. I wanted to be the woman who’d healed and grown stronger. Even if I’m not.”
“Now, that’s a lie,” Shelia said, tossing down the wire cutters. “You can handle anything. I did, didn’t I?”
“But you don’t have to worry anymore. Your cross to bear is rotting in the cemetery-”
“And good riddance,” Shelia interrupted, easing her girth onto a stool. Today she wore monochromatic red with jangling silver bracelets. Her curls had red woven within the ebony depths. It was a very edgy, hip look, but Shelia’s eyes were those of an old soul. “Tell your man.”
“He’s not my man. He’s-” Addy snapped her mouth closed because she didn’t know what in the hell to call Lucas. “Why mix him up in my misery?”