A Woman Like Annie

by Inglath Cooper

  “You will,” Annie said softly. “Don’t ask me how, but I just know it.”

  And hearing her little sister say the words with such absolute conviction, Clarice believed them herself.

  CLARICE WENT UPSTAIRS to get dressed. Annie put away the last of the dishes in her sister’s sink, grateful that the two of them had straightened things out. Clarice was such an important part of her life. Without her, everything felt out of balance, off-center. Annie still felt the fissure that separated what had once been solid ground between them, but she was hopeful that if they both followed the edges of it, somewhere ahead it would merge back into one path again. Regardless of what happened between Jack and her.

  Clarice reappeared in the kitchen doorway, now dressed in jeans and a light green blouse. “So are you going to tell me what else is bothering you?”

  “J.D. wants Tommy,” Annie said.

  Clarice blinked, her lips making an O of surprise. “He’s worse than San Francisco fault lines. Always trying to shake things up.”

  “He’s serious this time, Clar. He was at my house last night when I got home. With an ultimatum. Either we get back together, or he’ll find a way to get sole custody of Tommy.”

  Clarice looked as shocked as Annie had felt last night. “What happened to L.A. and his barely legal Cassie?”

  Annie shrugged. “You know J.D. He has the attention span of a gnat.”

  “So what’s behind all this?”

  “I don’t know,” Annie said, her voice failing to hide the distress her heart felt. “He says he misses Tommy. And me.”

  “I don’t doubt that for a minute, but with J.D., isn’t there always an agenda other than the immediately obvious?”

  “He thinks he’s had some sort of epiphany. Realized what he’s thrown away. He wants another chance at being a good father, a good husband. Thinks he never really gave either his best effort because he was distracted with his career and then with his injury. He says he’s ready now to be a pro at both.”

  Clarice chewed her bottom lip; her eyes widened with what looked like a moment of inspiration. “So then let him.”

  Annie frowned; it was not the response she had expected from the sister who had practically stood at the county line waving good riddance to J.D. when he’d left Macon’s Point. “Clarice, there is no way I’m letting him back into my life.”

  “Not permanently. Just temporarily. Just long enough to drown him in domesticity and all the things he’s convinced himself he now wants. To let him hang himself, as they say. He claims to want all of those things, so let him prove it.”

  Annie pondered the suggestion, struck with the inspiration of it. J.D. was one of those people for whom revelations had to come from within. Unless it was his idea, his emotion, he didn’t trust it. “What if it doesn’t work, though?”

  “Then you’ll have to fight it out in court. Which is where you’re headed right now, anyway.”

  The thought of that made Annie’s stomach turn. She’d gotten a very large dose of just how ruthless that process could be during their divorce. She did not want to test the waters of the legal maneuverings involved in a custody battle. Dragging Tommy through that would be her worst nightmare.

  So what did she have to lose in trying this route first?

  JACK DROVE THROUGH town that morning with his thoughts all tied up in the meeting ahead. A couple of discreet phone calls had revealed that today was Early Gunter’s day off. Which made sense considering the late hour he’d undoubtedly arrived home last night.

  One hand on the wheel, he took another jump through the set of possible actions he could take from here. None of them was remotely palatable. And all led back to the same beginning. He had no choice but to do something.

  The easiest response would have been involving the police. To do so would have meant keeping his own hands clean as far as confrontation went. But one thing had changed since he’d come back to Macon’s Point: he cared what happened to that factory. He’d awoken to that realization this morning, its existence clearly etched in his conscience. He cared. Didn’t want to see it sucked down the pipes of bankruptcy like so much dishwater.

  Corbin Manufacturing had made a difference in the lives of a lot of people. Still could. That was the part he could no longer ignore. Annie’s efforts at personalizing the situation had worked. When he thought of the company now, he saw individual faces, recognized what the demise of the business would mean to each of them, to this town.

  And so he’d called Early, asked him to meet him in the parking lot of the old Second Baptist Church off Elm Hollow Road. A startled Early had agreed on the phone. Question was, would he follow through?

  Nothing about this meeting held the mark of anything Jack would normally have done. He should have decided ahead what he was going to say. Let someone know where he was in case anything went wrong. But he hadn’t done any of that. He wanted to hear what Early had to say for himself. Eye to eye. Man to man.

  They’d agreed to meet in the church’s back parking lot. Jack was ten minutes ahead of schedule. He drove around the side of the building. Early was already there. Pacing the width of an old blue pickup and puffing on a cigarette hard enough to suck the whole thing down his throat.

  Jack parked beside him, got out, kept his expression neutral. “Hey, Early.”

  “Jack.” The nod was curt, but the look in his eyes was pure terror.

  “Guess you know why I called.”

  Early shrugged. “That you out there last night?”

  Jack nodded.

  Early dropped the cigarette, ground it out with the scuffed toe of his work boot. “So what’re you plannin’ to do about it?”

  “Thought I’d ask you the same.”

  “Ain’t much I can do.”

  Jack leaned back against the hood of Early’s old truck, hung a heel on the front bumper, folded his arms across his chest. “Guess I don’t see it that way.”

  “What is it you do see?”

  “I’d like to think a mistake.”

  Early hung his head. “Don’t matter what you call it if it’s wrong, and you can’t go back and redo it.”

  “How’d you get in this mess, Early?”

  “Weakness, I guess.”

  Jack respected that answer. A lot of men would have thrown out a list of excuses that had nothing to do with their own responsibility. “Would you redo it if you could?”

  Early looked up, met Jack’s direct gaze, his eyes wavering, then snapping back and holding their ground. “Reckon I would.”

  “My father thought you were a good man. Not once in my life did I ever know him to be wrong on that. Was he wrong this time?”

  Early’s face, weathered, time-worn, held the clear footprints of shame. And regret.

  “One thing was true about my father, Early. He knew how to judge a man’s character. I don’t think he was wrong about you. And that’s what tells me you would never have started this thing on your own. You want a chance to make this right, you’re gonna have to tell me who did.”

  THEY’D TALKED FOR over an hour. Gone over from the beginning when the stealing had started, how long it had been going on. And Early had given him names. The two that counted. One was Hugh Kroner. This did not surprise Jack.

  Hugh and the other man were educated, highly paid executives who had embezzled from the company with deliberate intent. Jack could not excuse Early’s role in the situation. But if he called in the police on the other two, Early would go to jail as well. Maybe that would have been the right thing. Maybe Jack was being too soft.

  He hadn’t promised Early anything. Had just told him he had a lot of thinking to do and that he would be in touch. Early had given him his word he would not betray him by letting the others involved know of their meeting.

  Now, headed back toward town, there was one person, and only one, with whom he wanted to share all this. And that was Annie.

  J.D. PACED THE WIDTH of Annie’s living-room floor like a cat someone had for
gotten to let out for its daily prowl.

  He glanced at his watch. Where was that boy? “Tommy,” he called up the stairs. “Hurry up now, or I might have to find somebody else to throw ball with today.”

  “Coming, Dad,” he yelled back, panic in his voice, his footsteps thumping faster on the wood floor of his bedroom.

  A car pulled up outside and shut off its engine. J.D. went back to the window. Annie, probably. Maybe he could talk her into a little bedroom reunion before he and Tommy headed for the park.

  But the vehicle outside was a black Porsche. A man got out. Well, well.

  J.D. slicked a hand across his hair, shot a glance in the foyer mirror, then went to open the door.

  Jack Corbin looked surprised to say the least. He caught it fast though, and said, “Annie home?”

  “Not right at the moment,” J.D. said, assessing the other man without moving his gaze below his face.

  “Been a few years,” Corbin said, sticking out his hand.

  J.D. reluctantly stuck out his own. “Yeah. Annie went over to Clarice’s. Should be back in a little while. Hear she’s been trying to talk you out of closing your factory.”

  “We’ve been working on a couple things together.”

  “Well, no doubt, in this instance, she’s been a more effective mayor than I would have been.”

  Corbin let that stand a moment and then, “In many, I’m sure.”

  “Since you and Annie have become friends, maybe you’d like to hear the good news. We’re going to try and work things out. Figured out Annie’s too good a woman to let go. And she’s decided not to put Tommy in the middle of a messy custody battle.”

  If J.D. hadn’t been looking for it, he might have missed the flare of emotion in Corbin’s eyes. Small as the victory was, he enjoyed it. J.D. loved all wins, big and small.

  Tommy thumped down the stairs. He stopped in the doorway beside J.D. and said, “Hi, Jack!”

  “Hey, Tommy. Gonna play some ball with your dad today?”

  Tommy nodded. “Wanna go with us?”

  “Can’t today, but thanks. Next time?”

  Tommy nodded. J.D. put a hand on the boy’s shoulder and pulled him in closer. “He’s his father’s boy.”

  Corbin held his gaze for a long moment, then said, “Have fun, Tommy.” He got back in the Porsche and drove off.

  J.D. looked down at Tommy. “He been around much?”

  “He and Mama have been talking about bizness. He gave me a Hank Aaron card.”

  “That right?”

  “Wanna see it?” Tommy pulled back and looked up at him, eagerness in his face.

  “Nah. What do you need with a stupid old card when you’ve got the real thing?”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  AFTER SHE LEFT Clarice’s, Annie went to the office for a few hours, surely the most unproductive she’d ever spent there. The Lord’s Acre Sale was set to take place tomorrow in the high school parking lot. In addition to sitting in the dunking booth, Annie had been asked to give a speech. She’d started seven different versions, each now residing in a wadded-up ball at the bottom of her trash can.

  For the life of her, she couldn’t concentrate.

  Her emotions were like a seesaw with a bad spring, sending her zooming high and then plopping her down on the other side hard enough to loosen teeth.

  The seesaw was Jack.

  This was no time to be thinking about Jack.

  So, of course, she could not stop thinking about Jack.

  Her ex-husband had shown up on her doorstep out of the blue, intent on sending another wrecking ball through the center of her life. And every time she thought about Jack—just his name—she felt positively giddy inside, like a fourteen-year-old who’s just kissed without braces for the first time and figured out that it’s pretty darn incredible.

  Kissing J.D., she realized now, had been like kissing with braces on.

  Somehow, she had to make him see that he did not want his old life back.

  A COUPLE OF HOURS LATER, she was in the kitchen making a pot of soup, beef barley which she happened to remember J.D. hated—salt made him bloat, and barley, what was that anyway, some kind of earth mother food?—when he and Tommy returned from the park.

  The front door opened, and through it rolled the sound of Tommy’s happy laughter. “Can you believe how far that ball went, Daddy?”

  “You are gonna be something one day, son. No doubt about it,” J.D. said.

  Annie bit back the urge to run out and tell Tommy he already was something wonderful, that they didn’t need to wait around for that to happen. Stick to the plan, Annie. She gave the pot of soup another shower of salt and threw in an extra handful of barley.

  Cyrus got up from his spot at Annie’s feet and galloped to the front door.

  “Off, Cyrus,” J.D. said. “Down, boy.”

  Annie pictured J.D. flattened to the foyer wall, Cyrus’s paws planted on his chest in greeting. Good boy, Cyrus.

  The three of them straggled into the kitchen then, Tommy’s cheeks reddened by an afternoon outdoors, the look on his face one of such happiness that Annie teetered under the realization of how much he loved his father. Somehow, she had to keep her own agenda with J.D. separate from that. Tommy’s need for his father’s attention was something she was never going to be able to fill.

  “Hey, you two,” she said.

  “Mama, you’ll never believe what all we did today!”

  “So tell me,” Annie said.

  “We went to the Dairy Queen, and I got two orders of fries and an extra large Coke!”

  Annie smiled and raised her eyebrows, threw a look at J.D. who shrugged, innocent as ever. He looked a little rumpled around the edges. His short blond hair needed an appointment with a comb, and his white Hugo Boss T-shirt had a ketchup stain on the pocket.

  Fatherhood did not come naturally to J.D.

  Another image came to mind: Jack out in the backyard acting as pack pony for Tommy and his gang of friends. Don’t, Annie. Not a good place to go right now.

  Annie put a hand on Tommy’s shoulder. “Tommy, why don’t you go upstairs and change clothes before dinner?”

  “’Kay,” Tommy said and sailed off.

  J.D. came into the kitchen, leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Um, whatcha got cooking?”

  “Beef and barley,” she said, picking up the spoon and giving it a stir.

  Long pause. “Sounds great,” he said.

  Wow. He really was trying. “It’ll be ready in a few minutes.”

  “So have you thought about our talk last night, Annie?”

  “A little.”

  “And?”

  “I think we should give it a try.”

  J.D. smiled a cat-who-ate-the-canary smile. He’d expected no less. Just the thought nearly made Annie toss the whole ridiculous farce just so she could tell him hell would freeze over twice before he ever crossed the threshold of her bedroom door.

  “That’s my girl,” he said, reaching out to twine a finger through her hair.

  Annie stepped back, made a pretense of reaching in the back of a drawer for a spoon. “Don’t think this can just happen overnight, J.D.”

  “I know we have a lot of water under our bridge, Annie. But you’ve always been the kind of woman who could forgive and forget.”

  Doormat Annie again. The assessment made her steam inside and filled her with an urge to dunk his head in the pot of soup simmering on the stove.

  “You had a visitor today,” he said.

  Annie swung around, something in the tone of his voice setting off alarm bells. “Who?”

  “Jack Corbin.”

  Her heart did a three-sixty. She turned back to the stove. “Oh. What did he say?”

  “Not too much. He didn’t look all that thrilled to see me here.”

  Annie dipped out a spoonful of soup and sampled it, scorching her tongue which she didn’t trust with words, anyway.

  “I told him we were going to try and patch thi
ngs up,” J.D. said.

  Annie whirled around, soup flying from the spoon to splatter his ketchup-tarnished T-shirt. “You what?”

  He glanced down as he flicked the spots off. And after a few moments, “Well, there’s no reason it should be a secret, is there?”

  Annie put a clamp on her response while rebellion bucked inside her. Of all the absolute nerve! With his track record during their marriage, it surpassed all standards of arrogance for J.D. to go anywhere near the subject of her personal life when they were divorced. Divorced!

  She popped open the cupboard door beside the stove and pulled out a bowl, filling it with soup. “Sit down, J.D.,” she said in a sugar-infused voice. “Dinner’s ready.”

  JACK DROVE OUT to the factory feeling as if he’d walked into a stone wall.

  Annie was getting back together with J.D.

  How could that be?

  After last night—

  And yet he’d seen the man standing in her house with his own eyes. Heard him say the words with his own ears.

  When he was with Annie, for the first time in his life, he’d been blindsided by proof that maybe he’d been wrong all these years. He had never felt for anyone what he felt when he looked at Annie. As if he’d been given new eyes to see the world with, as if he could do things that he’d previously had no ability to do and filled him with hope for things that had never before seemed possible.

  He’d woken up this morning to the memory of Annie in his arms. And he had known then that he wanted her in his life. He wanted a life with her. Here, in this place, the goodness of which he had finally let himself remember.

  He didn’t want to get on yet another airplane and fly to the other side of the world where he knew no one, had no ties.

  Yet, how could he stay here now, loving Annie?

  Fate had an awful sense of humor. The man who did not believe in life-changing love had just gotten his life changed by love. And the woman responsible for it wasn’t available.