Jimmy snorted but didn’t comment further. JD was grateful for that. So, the Marshall bad luck didn’t stop at women. It extended in every direction. What else was new? He could thank God he had brains and could worm his way out of anything. Unfortunately, right now his brain was telling him the Marshall bad luck could just possibly be the result of the Marshall tendency to leap before looking. Harry’s end certainly gave evidence of that.
This time his recklessness could have cost him everything he’d ever wanted out of life. JD just wished his brains would figure some way to get Nina back over here again.
“It’s late. There’s not a thing we can do right now but wait and see what happens when the stock market opens in the morning. Why don’t we turn in?”
Nancy’s request caught JD by surprise. She’d scarcely said a thing all evening. She sent him a pointed look he couldn’t interpret now. Damn, but he’d never understand women. He wondered if this meant she wouldn’t trust him with Jackie anymore. Jackie. A great grinding ache dug into his soul. How could he get Jackie back and still have time to salvage his business and take over another? He had to put his son even before Nina. Damn. People demanded a hell of a lot more from him than machines did. He was afraid he didn’t have what it took.
Jimmy obediently unfolded his lanky body from the chair and followed Nancy from the room with a minimum of “good nights.”
That left Nina clearing the table and finishing up the rest of the dishes.
“Nina?” Tentatively, JD stepped forward. She retreated to the sink.
“Will you take me to the airport?” she asked in a monotone.
She kept her back turned toward him. JD ground his teeth and clenched his fingers into fists, not knowing how else to keep a grip on his temper. “Now? There’s nothing going out now.”
“There’s a flight out first thing in the morning. I don’t want to miss it.”
“Nina, I...”
She turned, and JD flinched at the tears in her eyes. He couldn’t handle tears. Not from Nina. They broke his heart in two. He could feel himself internally hemorrhaging.
“Please, JD. I want to go home.”
He understood. He understood only too well. Nodding his head, not letting her see his agony, JD headed for the door. “I can get the bike past the wreck in the driveway. Is your bag packed?”
He walked out into the now-quiet desert night while his soul crumbled into ashes. She didn’t want him. He couldn’t argue with that. No one else ever had either. He wasn’t even certain he liked himself very much, not after he’d let Harry down like that. His recklessness had cost one life already, and nearly cost the lives of the only other people he cared about.
Nina would be much better off in the safety of her own world, without him.
Chapter 32
The excruciating heat and humidity of August had all but decimated the roses. Nina pinched off several black-spotted leaves and a heat-shattered bloom. No amount of tender loving care could produce lovely roses in this weather. But if she took good care of them, they’d come back in September and bloom for a couple of months more. A pity she couldn’t salvage people the same way.
The bittersweet memory of her last conversation with Hattie echoed through her thoughts as she clipped the roses. “Nina takes after me,” Hattie had said with pride. “I want my granddaughter to have the roses. Hank would have loved her.” Tears stung Nina’s eyes as she broke off another spent bloom. Why, Hattie? she cried inside, but she was past regrets now. Now that she knew some of the truth, she knew Hattie had loved her in her own way. JD had taught her that.
Even though she wore a wide-brimmed hat, the hot sun made her dizzy. Pulling off her gloves, Nina flung them in the basket she used to carry her gardening tools. Looking out over the flat bean fields and calm lake from her vantage point on Hattie’s Hill, Nina experienced a modicum of satisfaction. Maybe, with time, she could again accept this land as a substitute for the life she would never have, a life she had glimpsed briefly through JD.
Pushing that thought aside, Nina picked up her basket and started down the hill. In the distance, she could hear the muted roar of a bulldozer leveling some of the scrub brush in the back field. The donations JD had solicited had been generous. The corporation could now afford to reimburse Tom for his labor. Already, outside money flowed into Madrid’s coffers. Come winter, the men would begin building the boardwalk through the wildlife habitat—income they wouldn’t have had otherwise. Even the governor had heard of the project and had visited with his entourage of reporters. His blessings had generated more donations. Through the magic of JD’s confidence, her dreams were well on their way to becoming reality.
Some of them, anyway. Setting her basket in the toolshed, Nina wiped her brow with the back of her arm. JD had taught her to dream big and take action, but she hadn’t quite got the knack of it yet. All the details bogged her down, but without those details, she’d spend her days moping and her nights without sleep. She would find her pace eventually, she figured.
She washed her hands in the kitchen sink, then dug out the brownies Helen had baked. They still didn’t speak much to each other, but they’d developed a few patterns that reduced confrontation. Helen did the cooking because Nina didn’t. Nina bought the groceries because Helen couldn’t. Resentment lingered, but neither of them was in any immediate position to change things.
Heaping two scoops of Breyers chocolate ice cream on top of the brownie, Nina wandered toward the front porch. Shade covered it this time of day, and the fan she’d hooked up provided the only breeze on a day like this. JD would have heart failure if he saw the way she’d run an extension cord out the window. But JD was in California merging his company with the newly acquired Astrocomputer.
She still didn’t have a computer and couldn’t get e-mail. JD didn’t write. She understood that. He’d called a few times, but she hadn’t been in the house when he did, and she didn’t have an answering machine. She hadn’t returned the calls Helen had told her about. She didn’t see the point. He had his world, she had hers. She couldn’t find any conceivable connection between the two.
Nina bit back a sigh when she discovered Helen had already appropriated the porch swing beneath the fan. She still couldn’t bring herself to call this woman “mother.” She’d never been a mother to her. She was just some stranger connected by blood and obligation. Nina felt closer to JD than to her own flesh and blood. Odd, but it couldn’t be helped.
“I’ve talked to Matt Home,” Helen announced as Nina took a seat on the porch railing closest to the fan.
“That should have been a spiritually uplifting experience,” Nina murmured, dipping into her ice cream. Matt Home would never get her vote, the lying, conniving bastard. The lawyer JD had found had proved his mettle thirty times over. Nina just wished everything she thought about didn’t include JD.
Helen gave her a puzzled look. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not clever like you. Matt Home is a decent boy. He’s done his best for me.”
“Matt Home did the best for himself. Be grateful he was too lazy to cause you any harm.” Nina didn’t want to talk about how Matt Home had sought her mother out and brought her back here to pry Hattie’s farm out of her hands. She hadn’t even asked how he’d known where to find her mother. She figured it was in his father’s records somewhere. His father had been Hattie’s attorney before Matt. Nina thought she’d much rather turn on an Andy Williams record, eat her ice cream in peace, and listen to the katydids than think about Matt.
Helen had sense enough to grimace at Nina’s gloomy analysis. “Well, I’ll admit your fancy city lawyer did a far sight better. I don’t know why I never looked for my birth certificate.”
“Because you had a baptismal certificate and that’s all you needed to get married. It’s not like you ever needed a passport or anything.” Nina shrugged. The lawyer’s revelation of Helen’s true parentage had been something of a shock, to put it mildly. Nina still struggled with the
concept.
“I always thought of Hattie as a dried-up old spinster. I knew she had a broader mind than my mother”—Helen corrected herself—”than her sister. She understood when I got pregnant with you. I just never realized why. I still can’t believe it.”
“I suppose we should have known.” Nina licked her spoon and recalled lazy days on this porch with Hattie warning her of the dangers of men. “Most women don’t despise men without reason. We should have asked her how she knew so much about them.”
Helen chuckled. “Right. I can see that now. She would have looked down her long nose and said, ‘None of your beeswax.’ She didn’t go to all the trouble of pretending Marietta was my mother just to spill the beans if we asked. I wonder whatever happened to my real father?”
“It was wartime, remember. That’s probably why Hattie sympathized with your situation so easily. I bet if I ask Ethel, she can tell me who Hank Wheeler was. He was probably here on leave just long enough to get Hattie pregnant, then got himself killed when he went back to war. My word, she must have been almost forty years old! Can you just imagine?” Nina shook her head in disbelief at the thought. “I didn’t think the military took men that old.”
Helen shoved the porch swing restlessly. “It scarcely makes any difference, does it? I never knew my father either way. It just means the woman I thought of as mother died ‘without issue,’ as the lawyer put it. So the whole damned farm belonged to Hattie.”
“It would have all come to you either way, whether you were Hattie’s child or Marietta’s.” Nina tried not to gloat, although she’d been doing it privately for weeks, ever since her lawyer found the deed book. Hiding her secret elation, she scraped her spoon along the bottom of the bowl and didn’t look up.
“Yeah, it would have been mine if the conniving old witch hadn’t deeded the whole lot to you as a graduation present. I can’t believe she didn’t tell you.”
“I can’t believe she didn’t tell Matt.” Nina couldn’t stifle her grin as she remembered Matt’s face when her city lawyer had flung the deed and her mother’s birth certificate on his desk. For a fleeting moment, she’d felt damned good. “Hattie’s mental faculties were still sharp back then. She must have done it for a reason. If the stupid clerk had bothered changing the tax bills, there never would have been any confusion. It’s about time they computerized down there.”
Helen remained silent. Uneasily, Nina sneaked a peek at her. Helen had no money of her own, but she’d made some arrangement with one of the beauticians in town to have her hair done once a week in exchange for helping out around the shop. She didn’t have a beautician’s license, but she knew the business well enough. Just her polished, elegantly coiffed appearance gave proof of that. Not for the first time, Nina wondered how her mother had spent those missing years. They never talked about it.
“I know why she did it.” Helen’s harsh words cut the silence.
“You were her daughter.” For some reason, Nina didn’t want to hear what Helen might say. She’d had enough surprises for a lifetime. “She loved you. She always believed you would return. She took care of me for you. She had no reason to deed the farm to me unless someone told her you were dead.”
“I was as good as dead, and Hattie knew it,” Helen said bitterly. “I could have served time for the rest of my life. And she had to know that I had no way of supporting this place if I got out. She knew I’d sell it. So she deeded it to her granddaughter in hopes you would take care of me as I never took care of you.”
Nina wished she could shut down her mind and not hear what she’d just heard. It upset too many preconceived notions. She’d clung to an image of her mother as a glamorous party girl, swinging from man to man, drinking and making merry. She didn’t want this other image shoved on her. Grappling with the idea of Great-aunt Hattie as her grandmother provided sufficient headache.
But once started, Helen proceeded relentlessly. “I killed your stepfather. Back then, people didn’t know about stalking or care about spouse abuse. They thought a woman got what she deserved, that a man had a right to beat his wife if she didn’t behave. I sure as hell didn’t behave, I’ll grant you that. I threw him out of the house when you were eight, but he wouldn’t stay away. So I left you with Hattie and ran. He followed me. When he got the divorce papers, he beat me within an inch of my life. I moved again. I was working toward my beautician’s license, but I was having a good time while I was at it, enjoying my freedom.”
Having set aside her bowl, Nina clenched the railing so tightly she could feel splinters piercing her skin. She wanted to jump and run. She didn’t want to believe any of this. But the anguish on her mother’s face drew harsh lines in her perfectly made-up complexion.
“Richard found me again. I never knew how he did it. I didn’t write to anyone so no one would know where I was. I was young and stupid and never considered consequences, but I did think that far. He found me in a bar and put me in the hospital again. When I got out, I bought a gun. The next time he came after me, I killed him.”
“That’s self-defense!” Nina protested, drawn into the story despite herself. “Any good lawyer could have gotten you off.”
“Who could afford good lawyers?” Helen asked coldly. “I had a shiny new public defender who told me I was lucky not to get the chair for premeditation for buying the gun. Richard didn’t have the gun. I did. Case closed.”
Nina shut her eyes and dug her fingers deeper into the railing. She didn’t want to feel sympathy or rage. Maybe it would all go away if she just sat here and wished herself back to a few months ago, when everything was so much simpler. It wasn’t going to happen.
“So you went to prison and never wrote again,” Nina said between clenched teeth, remembering all those Christmases when she’d prayed for a card, for a miracle, for a Santa Claus she’d never believed in.
“Hattie knew where I was. It was a life sentence at the time. We both thought it best for you if you just forgot about me. We didn’t know the laws would change so the governor could commute the sentences for abused women.”
Rage exploded into Nina’s bloodstream, burning like molten lava. Tears of helplessness streamed down her cheeks.
“All these years, and I could have had birthday cards, a mother’s advice, words that might have made me feel loved, and you and Hattie threw them away?” Shattered, Nina wrapped her arms around herself and rocked back and forth, unable to comprehend the enormity of this revelation. “I wouldn’t have cared if you were in prison!” she shouted. “I wouldn’t have cared if you were in Siberia! I could have visited, sent presents, maybe known I had a real mother who loved me. And you’re telling me Hattie prevented it? She didn’t even tell us she was my grandmother, and you listened to her?”
Incoherent, unable to decipher her warring emotions, Nina slid off the railing and stalked away, ignoring her mother’s stuttered excuses. She thought she might scream. She thought she might throw herself into the lake and see where it took her. Anything was better than this incomprehensible fog of rage.
She couldn’t deal with these betrayals. She’d lost JD, lost the aunt she’d never really known, and gained a mother with the backbone of a toadstool. None of it made sense.
Maybe she should take a real vacation. School would start in another few weeks. She needed to get away and make sense of it all.
***
JD halted the Harley with his foot and turned off the ignition. Sometimes in wet weather the now-healed bone ached, but he didn’t notice a twinge now. He was focused on the crumbling old two-story farmhouse before him.
“Hey, Dad, I think I see Laddie back there. Can I go see what he’s doing?”
Behind him, Jackie climbed off the bike and waited impatiently for some response. Dragging his thoughts back to his son, JD grinned ruefully. “You still have that much energy after riding cross-country on this thing?”
Jackie’s grin was almost identical to his own as he gave an ungraceful teenage shrug. “Well, next time, l
et’s try an airplane, okay?”
JD laughed and waved his son away before he did something foolish like hugging the boy. Jackie hated being hugged, but JD had developed a fondness for displays of affection. He’d never known a mother’s kisses or a father’s love, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t love his own son. He just needed some practice. He could damned well learn anything he put his mind to.
A certain wide-eyed sprite had taught him that.
Glancing up at the house again, JD suffered a moment’s trepidation. Nina hadn’t returned his calls. He supposed he could assume her mother had never mentioned them, but he knew Tinkerbelle too well to believe that. If he hadn’t called, she would have checked with Nancy and Jimmy to make certain he was still alive. He’d defeated his own purpose by calling. Now she didn’t need to check in.
It was possible that he was about to make a huge fool of himself. Once upon a long time ago, he’d been the butt of his father’s drunken jokes and the laughingstock of the third grade because he was skinny and short and ill-dressed. He heartily disliked being laughed at. He’d turned himself into the class bully overcoming that particular distaste, and no one had laughed at him ever again. Did he really want to subject himself to the possibility of even more severe humiliation at Nina’s hands?
He hadn’t driven two thousand miles on a Harley to back out now.
He’d promised Jackie a few weeks at the lake before school started, and his son would have them. That’s what JD told himself as he climbed the stairs to the front porch. Of course, if that’s all he had wanted, he would have called first and made certain it was okay. But that wasn’t all he wanted.
He scanned the porch, checking for diminutive sprites in the shadows, searching out details of changes since he’d been here last. They still hadn’t installed a doorbell. He knocked, and while he waited, he frowned at the portable fan attached to the extension cord coming out of the window. The idiot would damned well electrocute herself one of these days. Somebody should look after her.
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