A Woman Like Annie

by Inglath Cooper

  “Can I have as much syrup as Mr. Corbin, Mama?”

  Annie tried not to smile. “I’ll pour, and you say when, okay?”

  Jack passed the syrup bottle to her with a slightly embarrassed shrug, which startled her with its unexpected appeal. “Okay, so in some ways, a man never grows up.”

  “In most ways,” Annie said, the remark slipping out before she had given it an edit.

  He cocked an eyebrow and passed up commenting on that, but Annie didn’t miss the curiosity in his eyes.

  After finishing with Tommy’s pancakes, Annie drizzled dressing across her salad, took a few token bites and then put down her fork, feeling as if the lettuce were sticking in her throat. The sooner she said what she’d come to say, the sooner the knot of nerves inside her would dissolve. “As I was saying, Jack—” She stopped, cleared her throat, then tried again. “Five hundred people in this town will be out of work if you close down your factory. That means they won’t be able to pay their mortgages or car payments. They will be without health insurance. If you shut down that factory, you might as well shut down the whole town.”

  She’d gained momentum near the end, strong and not a little accusatory. Annie happened to believe that every word she had just said was true, and she somehow needed to make him understand that. “There must be something that can be done. It’s not as if the company is in bankruptcy.”

  Jack Corbin studied her for several long seconds. Annie resisted the distinct urge to fidget under that level stare and remained still in her seat. It was the most intimidating stare she’d ever faced in her life. Don’t look away, Annie. If you do, he wins.

  “Close enough,” he said, a glimmer of respect in his eyes when he said, “Look, Mrs. McCabe—”

  “Annie.”

  “Annie,” he inclined his head, “I appreciate your position. And I’m sorry that things have ended this way. My father’s company provided the people of this town with livelihoods for a lot of years. But he’s not here anymore. And Corbin Manufacturing was his vision, not mine.”

  Annie’s heart sank. As explanations went, his sounded as if it had been forged in steel. The set look to his jaw told her that she didn’t have an icicle’s chance in Tahiti of turning this particular situation around. She suddenly felt tired and resigned and downright sad.

  Some combination of those emotions must have been reflected in her face. He sighed and said, “Look, I appreciate the difficulty of your position, Annie. I hope you can do the same of mine.”

  Annie toyed with a piece of lettuce at the edge of her bowl, avoiding his gaze. She looked up then and met it head on. “Actually, I can’t. You see, I know most of these people as individuals. I know Sam Crawford who works in your finishing department. He has a wife with MS and three children he’s somehow managing to raise while working and taking care of her. I know Milly Thomsen who works in the front office. She’s supporting herself and twin girls after her husband was killed in a logging accident last year. I see the individual tragedies that will happen in this town if that factory closes down, and no, I can’t accept the rightness of that. Not if there’s any way at all to avoid it.”

  Tommy’s heels thunked against the lower panel of the booth. “I’m sleepy, Mama. Are you done talkin’ bizness?”

  “I think we’re just about finished, Tommy,” Jack said, shifting his unreadable gaze from Annie to her son who was rubbing his eyes with the back of a fist.

  Annie put an arm around Tommy’s shoulders, her heavy heart dropping a few more inches. “Thank you for listening. I only wish I could have said something to make you reconsider.”

  She got up from the booth then, pulled her wallet from her purse and put a twenty on the table. “Let’s go home, Tommy.”

  Tommy blinked with sleepy eyes and said, “You didn’t eat all your pancakes, Mr. Corbin.”

  Jack got up and stood politely to the side. “No, I didn’t. I wasn’t as hungry as I thought.”

  “Well, we’ll be going,” Annie said stiffly, taking Tommy’s hand.

  “Good night,” Tommy said.

  “Nice to meet you, Tommy.”

  “Good night,” Annie said. She led her son back through the restaurant, the weight of failure heavy on her shoulders.

  AFTER LEAVING WALKER’S, Jack followed South Main out of town, winding through the September night, leaving his window cracked to reacquaint himself with the smells of the country. Burning leaves in the front yard of what had once been the old Jefferson house. Corn silage at Saul’s Dairy.

  He traveled the last two miles of the secondary road that led to Glenn Hall behind a seen-better-days Ford pickup with a missing taillight and a lopsided bumper, the right side of which nearly touched the pavement every time the driver tapped his brakes.

  For once, Jack didn’t mind the pace. His regular life revolved around being in a hurry. Last-minute trips. Nearly-missed planes. A new city every week. He’d set his life up that way, and most of the time, it suited him just fine. Slowing down gave a man too much time to think, often enough about things that didn’t bear up under scrutiny. Like where he’d been instead of where he was going. That he couldn’t go back and erase tracks he’d already made. All he could do was point his feet in another direction next time out.

  Jack hated letting people down, and it seemed as if lately he’d become an expert at it.

  He’d certainly let Annie McCabe down tonight. And he felt like a heel.

  Okay, so maybe it hadn’t been as easy as he’d expected it to be. Saying no to a woman with eyes the color of Swiss chocolate and a little boy at her side. It had been the most unconventional business meeting Jack had ever attended.

  He didn’t know what he’d expected in Annie, maybe forty-five and frumpy. Nix that image. She was cute like a Meg Ryan where a first glance says, hmm, nice. Second glance, very nice.

  She had the kind of mouth that got him distracted fast. Full lower lip which she worried with even, white teeth in between the arguments she’d been launching at him with fastball accuracy.

  And she’d been married to J. D. McCabe. J.D. had been a couple years older than Jack. Jack had gone to a private school, so their paths rarely crossed. But he remembered J.D. as a guy with a laser-beam smile and more than his share of confidence. He wondered why the idea of Annie with him didn’t quite gel.

  The truck in front of him slowed to a crawl, then angled right and rolled off down a gravel driveway, freeing up the road. Jack nudged the accelerator to the floor, suddenly anxious to knock out each of the obligations standing between him and tying up for good these last connections to Macon’s Point.

  The Porsche raced up the next hill, rounded a curve, and there it was. Glenn Hall. The car’s headlights arced across two enormous fieldstone columns marking the entrance to the farm his father had left to Daphne Corbin, his second wife. Now Jack’s by default.

  He stopped and got out to open the gate with the key his attorney had sent him. He swung the gate arms wide. A three-quarter moon backlit a white four-rail fence in need of paint. Standing beneath an old maple some twenty feet inside the pasture were two big Percheron horses gazing at him with open curiosity.

  Jack ducked back inside the Porsche and found two pieces of peppermint candy in the glove compartment. He crossed the driveway to the fence. One of the horses nickered and ambled over.

  “Hey, Sam,” Jack said, unwrapping the candy and giving it to him. “Still the brave one, I see.”

  The other horse edged up beside them, not quite as courageous, but unwilling to be left out. “Hey, Ned, old boy.” Jack gave him the candy and rubbed his forehead. Both horses stood there, crunching their candy and sniffing Jack’s arm.

  Just the sight of them cut off the air in his lungs, flooding him with vivid memories of his father. Hooking up the team on a Sunday afternoon, taking Jack and his mother for a wagon ride down the old country roads surrounding the farm. To most people, this side of Joshua Corbin had never meshed with the image of a CEO whose business p
rovided a big percentage of the town’s jobs. But to Jack, it had. As a little boy, it was seeing his father drive those gigantic horses that had made his heart swell with pride, made him want to tell the world that was his father up there. He’d taught Jack a lot about life through those horses. How to care for things that depended on you. That a soft voice brought about the desire to please in a way a harsh hand never could.

  They were old now. In their late twenties at least. There had been four at one time. He threw a glance across the pasture behind him. If the other two had been out there grazing, they would have made their way to the fence already. He was surprised any of them were still alive, more so that Daphne hadn’t sold them all long ago. He almost wished she had just so he didn’t have to.

  Sam and Ned had spent their entire lives here. He’d find a good home for them, but that didn’t make him feel any better.

  He gave them a last rub, got back in the car and followed the winding driveway to the house that sat on a slight rise some quarter mile away. From the outside, at least, nothing had changed. The house had been built from fieldstone. White wooden shutters bracketed each window. An enormous mahogany door marked the center entrance. Jack’s father had built it for his mother, the two of them using an old pickup on weekends to load up the rock for the house from the edges of the fields on the farm. It was she who should have lived here all these years. She who should have left it to him. Not Daphne.

  He got out, leaving the couple of bags he’d brought with him in the back of the car.

  Jack pulled the key from his pocket and opened the front door. He’d expected to be greeted with the musty scent of neglect. Instead, the house smelled clean, fresh, as if someone had just been through with a bottle of lemon Pledge and a bucket of soapy water.

  Jack flicked on a light, then stood in the hallway, giving himself a moment to acquaint memory with reality. He ventured down the front hallway, his footsteps echoing around him. It was a sad, no-one-lives-here sound that did not fit his memories of a childhood rich with all the things that make a house a home. Warm cooking smells. Winter evenings spent in front of a crackling fire. Summer afternoons on the back porch drinking lemonade.

  The memories stung.

  “Jack?”

  He swung around, and there in the doorway stood Essie Poindexter. Rounder than he remembered. But with the same smile that connected in a straight line from her mouth to her eyes.

  Emotion had a lock on his throat. “Essie,” he finally said.

  “Land’s sake, I can’t believe it’s really you, son.”

  They stepped forward at the same time, meeting halfway across the room in a fierce hug, he towering over her short, stout frame, she with her chubby arms locked tight about his waist.

  When he finally pulled back, tears marked her round cheeks. He reached out and rubbed them away with his thumbs. She hadn’t changed much, a few more lines in her face, maybe, softened, though, by the warm welcome there. The sight of her deluged him with reminders of a childhood in which she had played a more-than-significant part. For as long as he could remember, she had lived in a house his father had built for her at one end of the farm. She’d been hired as a housekeeper to help out Jack’s mother, but Jack had always thought of her as family.

  “I saw lights coming up the driveway and figured I better see who it was. Thought you could slip in without seeing old Essie, huh?” she asked, the hurt behind the question barely concealed.

  He pulled her against his chest again and rubbed her slightly humped back with the palm of his hand. “Of course I was coming to see you, Es.”

  “I’d say it’s about time,” she said, pulling away to squint up at him. She stepped farther back and took a longer look. “I remember your father at thirty-three. You look just like him. Handsome as the day is long. I just wish you two had mended your fences.”

  He held up a hand. “Essie, don’t, okay?”

  “I expected to see you here for the funeral, son,” she said, her words colored with equal doses of admonishment and disappointment. “I know you never got to know her, but she was your stepmother. She was sick for a good while.”

  “I didn’t know. But I’m sorry about it, Essie. I was out of the country when it happened. I didn’t receive word until the day after the funeral. Besides, I wouldn’t have belonged there, anyway.”

  She gave him a look of disagreement, then pressed her lips together as if deciding this wasn’t the time to argue. She reached for the cover draped across the closest chair and yanked it off, sending up a puff of dust. “Give me a couple hours, and I’ll have this place looking livable,” she said, tugging at the sheet on the couch. “If you’d have let me know you were coming, I’d already have it done.”

  “You don’t have to do that. I’m only staying a couple nights, Es. That’s all.”

  Essie didn’t say anything for several moments, the sheet in her hands slumping to the floor. “You’re really going through with it then? Selling the factory.”

  “It’s for the best.”

  “For who?” she asked quietly. “Surely, not this town.”

  “Essie—”

  She raised a hand and cut him off. “I know you think you have your reasons, Jack. And Lord knows at the time, I had a hard time understanding why your father did what he did. But sometimes, you’ve got to step a little closer for the picture to come into focus.”

  “Dad left the business to Daphne when he died. I think that made his feelings pretty clear. If he had wanted me to have it, he would have left it to me. Anyway, I didn’t come back to rehash the past,” he said, the words coming out harsher than he’d intended. Meeting the older woman’s sorrowful gaze, he immediately regretted his abruptness.

  “Then why did you come back? You could have sold off this place and that business without ever setting foot in this house.”

  “I know.”

  “Then why did you?”

  “I’m not sure,” he answered, his tone softening, honest in this, at least. He’d never been able to lie to Essie. Even at eight when he’d raided the kitchen cookie jar before dinner and had the worst stomachache of his life, he’d owned up.

  “Could I ask one thing of you then, son? Don’t leave again until you can answer that question for me.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  ON THE OTHER end of the country, J. D. McCabe had spent the better part of the day stewing. Stretched out now on a lounge chair by the swimming pool in his backyard, he muttered a few curses at the fairer gender’s inability to see reason.

  Dadblame Annie’s hide. What in the world had happened to the moldable woman he’d married? There had been a time when he could snap his fingers, and she’d practically run to meet whatever need he needed met.

  She was still mad at him for running off with Cassie, that much he knew. But damn it all to hell, two divorced adults ought to be able to work things out in a dignified manner. He wanted to see his son, and she was bending over backward to make sure that didn’t happen. He was no dummy. Women had an unbelievable need for revenge when they considered themselves mistreated, and Annie had decided to use their son as her weapon of choice.

  Why couldn’t she just get over it?

  He flipped onto his stomach, reached for the Bloody Mary Cassie had brought out to him a few minutes ago and took a long sip. The generous portion of alcohol she had added to his tomato juice burned a gulch down his throat and lit a simultaneous fire under his already well-stoked indignation. He wasn’t going to stand for Annie being so selfish. He had rights. Not to mention he was a celebrity with five commercials running on network TV.

  And Tommy was his son. With his genes. His potential to be a great ball player some day.

  But not if she brought him up believing ballet was just as admirable as baseball if that was a person’s chosen passion.

  Let him decide if that’s what he wants for himself, J.D.

  Wrong! On some things, a child had to be pointed in a certain direction, shoved along a little, if n
ecessary. How the heck was a six-year-old supposed to know what he wanted to do with his life? If J.D. wasn’t mistaken, the boy was going to have his daddy’s arm. And if Tommy was told he was going to be a great baseball player like his dad, then odds were he would be.

  But Annie was so convinced she was right not to push the boy. In his opinion, this was just one more way for her to pay him back. By denying him the chance to see his own talent reflected back in his son.

  Who did she think she was? She’d been nothing more than a starry-eyed teenager when he’d met her in Atlanta. He’d given her a life most girls would have run barefoot across nails for a chance at. But of course Annie had never appreciated it. Had always looked at the few negatives of his career. She’d hated the traveling, the moving around. Why had she never seen the excitement in it? Exposure to new things, new people. J.D. thrived on that. And Annie’s inability to bend even one iota had been the true cause of the end of their marriage. She could be mad at him until the sun turned blue, but the way he saw it, she was the one at fault for their splitting up, anyway.

  And now she wanted to keep him from seeing Tommy.

  He let that simmer for a while. Sweat began to bead on his nose, causing his four-hundred-dollar sunglasses to slip. He shoved them back in place.

  The problem with Annie was that she’d developed way too big an opinion of herself. Ever since she’d stepped into his shoes as mayor of Macon’s Point—his own term as mayor had been little more than an amused diversion while he tried to figure out how to accept that he was never going to play pro baseball again—she’d gotten just a little too big for her britches. She actually thought she was going to make a difference in that podunk town. How much difference did she think she was going to make in a place that was never going to be anything special?

  “Are you still fretting over that phone call, honeybee?”

  J.D. looked up. Cassie stood at the sliding glass door of their Tuscan contemporary house, peering at him over the rim of her four-hundred-dollar sunglasses, identical to his. Why was it that she wanted them to have matching everything?