Really Something

by Shirley Jump

  He sighed. “I know, but guilt’s a funny animal. It’s got a really strong grip.” They’d reached the back of the property, where a small pond lay flanked by tall marsh grasses. A couple of mallard ducks floated along the edge, as if nothing had happened, quacking and swimming, looking for lunch, dunking their heads beneath the surface, little orange feet waving in the air. “After I told my father off, I felt terrible, too, and wished I could take it all back.”

  “Even after everything he did to you?”

  “Yeah.” Duncan shook his head. “I guess that makes me either very stupid or a hell of a softie.”

  “Or maybe a good man.”

  He looked out over the pond, exhaling a long breath. “I don’t know about that.”

  Allie came around him and pressed her hands to his cheeks, then a kiss to his lips, wishing she could take that burden away. All this time and Duncan had yet to forgive himself for what had happened to his sister. He still shouldered so much Henry blame. Her heart broke for him, for the load he carried. “I do. That’s the one thing I’ve always known deep inside. The Duncan underneath is a pretty good guy.”

  “Even if he’s the same man who broke your heart?”

  She turned away. It was far easier when they were talking about him, rather than her, and the one night she’d never forgotten.

  Allie plucked a milkweed from the bank and stripped off the little bells of lavender flowers, flinging them at the water. They floated away, attracting the ducks for a second before they realized it was nothing more than a plant. They quacked in indignation, then swam away.

  Allie closed her eyes, drew in a long breath, then opened her eyes again. “Do you know why I wouldn’t tell anyone who I was when I came to town?”

  He shook his head.

  “Lisa was a nice, easy scapegoat for me to blame everything on.” Allie tossed the stem to the ground. “It wasn’t just her, Duncan. It was about you. I chose Tempest, planned this whole thing, to come back here and…get even.”

  He stared at her, the shock on his face giving way to understanding, to realizing, maybe just a little, what he had done to her back then. “Because of prom night?”

  “Yes.” She closed her eyes, the familiar pain tightening her gut into a lump of stone. “You were the one person in my world, in that awful, horrible high school world who I thought understood me. Who liked me, and who I thought didn’t see my weight. Who really saw me. You told me—” Her voice shredded apart and she shook her head, unable to finish the sentence.

  He took a step closer, his hand cupping her jaw. “I told you I liked you. I asked you to the prom and then I didn’t show up.”

  She nodded, and damn it all, began crying, unable to stop the memory, the words, from flooding forward, the hurt from stabbing at her again, as fresh as it had been that day. “I stood there in that goddamned trailer, waiting for you, my hair all curled and fancied up with baby’s breath, in a stupid pink dress, waiting. And you couldn’t even call me yourself. You had your father do your dirty work.”

  “You don’t understand, Allie. There was more to it than just breaking a prom date.”

  “Yeah, there was. A whole lot more for me.” She swallowed, choked back the sob in her throat, steeling her heart again, refusing to let it hurt anymore. “Because of you, I have never really loved another man, or trusted one. Believed him when he said he loved me. I can’t let myself be vulnerable again. And I refuse ever to feel anything for you, not again.” But that was a lie. She’d already felt something. More than once.

  She loved him, dammit, and she wanted to stop, but her silly heart wouldn’t. It hadn’t learned its lesson, and she wanted to walk away, run really, from that look in his eyes, from the flutter of hope that still lived in her, like some animal in its last throes.

  “What about your ex-husband?” Duncan asked. “You didn’t love him?”

  “I thought I did at first, because…I thought he was different. That he wanted me for who I was. He was the first man I really, really trusted after I lost all the weight, but….” She smiled instead of finishing the sentence, instead of telling Duncan she had been a virgin, that she had trusted Geoff with that one gift. The curve of her lips hurt her face, and the smile fell. “But he never took the time really to get to know me. I was like a trophy he had to have and once he had me, he began to lose interest. But more than that…”

  “What?” Duncan asked, softly, when she didn’t finish.

  “He came across pictures of me from before and when he saw what I used to look like, he lost interest completely. I think he thought I could end up that way again. I don’t know. But after I saw his face, heard the sound in his voice when he talked about how I used to look—” The hurt stabbed at her again. “I realized he was as shallow as a puddle, and that’s when I filed for divorce.”

  “Oh, Allie,” Duncan said, “what kind of man rejects you like that? For something as stupid as that?”

  Allie shrugged, as if it hadn’t mattered, then grabbed another milkweed, releasing the lavender flowers in quick succession. “I wasn’t perfect and Geoff wanted perfection.”

  Duncan swung around to the front of her, taking the plant from her hands, tossing it down. “Who said you weren’t perfect?”

  Allie stepped aside and gestured at her reflection in the water, her image rippled and ovaled. “Every mirror I ever looked in back then. Every person who ever looked at me, then looked away. Oh sure, I look perfect now, but before…” She shook her head.

  “People didn’t do that.”

  She wheeled on him. “How would you know? You had no idea what my life was like back then. I was invisible, Duncan.”

  “Not to me,” he said softly. “Never to me.”

  “Then why the hell was I standing in a parking lot while you walked into the prom with Lisa Connelly on your arm?”

  “You saw that?”

  “Even after your father called me, I didn’t believe him. I went anyway, so sure he was lying because he was so cruel when he called, telling me you were sick and you were not going to the prom at all. And then he laughed. He laughed, Duncan. I knew, oh”—she closed her eyes, wishing she hadn’t even started this sentence—“oh, I knew why he did it. Because Allison Gray was an unacceptable choice for a Henry.”

  “Oh, Allie, it wasn’t—”

  “But it was, wasn’t it?”

  Duncan couldn’t say no and Allie knew it was because she’d nailed the real truth. No matter what, John Henry would have found a way to keep his son away from Allison Gray. “My father was a jerk. He was all about appearances. If I had known he did that to you, I would have…hurt him.”

  She looked at Duncan then, looked into the blue eyes she had known for so many years, searching for the answers she didn’t have. “Why Lisa, of all people? Why her, Duncan?”

  He drew in a breath and took a step back, turning toward the pond, the soft, damp earth sinking beneath his step. “Because my father owed her mother.”

  “What do you mean, owed her?”

  “When he took over the factory, he ruined a lot of lives, one of them being Eloise Connelly’s husband’s. He owned Whiteside Tire.”

  Allie nodded, thinking of how Lisa used to hold that little trump card over people in school. Her flashy cheerleading uniforms, the new house her father bought, the car he bought her for a birthday present. How much more important being the daughter of the Whiteside Tire Company owner made her, as if it gave her a license to be condescending.

  “But most important, he also had Eloise. She was the one thing my father always wanted and never had. My father and Eloise had been high school sweethearts, then she met Tim, had a fling, and wham, ended up pregnant and married at seventeen. He married my mother. But Tim and Eloise never had an easy marriage, because Eloise was a drunk, to put it bluntly, and that made Lisa hard and bitter. It still makes her hard and bitter, which is why she is the way she is today. I’m not excusing her, just explaining.” He wandered along the edge of the bank,
Allie by his side. “Anyway, my father always thought that if it had been him that Lisa’s mother married, Eloise would be fine.”

  Allie blinked. “A whole little Peyton Place thing going on in Tempest?”

  “Yeah.” Duncan shrugged. “So he bought the company, thinking he’d run Tim Connelly into the ground, and then Eloise would go looking for a new husband, and there my father would be, with open arms. But she didn’t. She stood by her husband, and he died of a broken heart, depression, who knows. And she blamed my father. Through it all, he still loved her and he would have moved heaven and earth to make it up to her.”

  The pieces began adding up and Allie saw the picture now, realized what must have happened. “So when Lisa’s boyfriend dumped her just before prom, your father spied an opportunity, a way to get in good with Eloise.”

  “Exactly. But, Allie, I didn’t do any of this. My father moved behind my back and next thing I knew, Lisa was on my doorstep with a limo at the curb.”

  “You could have called me, Duncan, told me. Explained it the next day.”

  Duncan hung his head and nodded. “Yeah, I should have. I was eighteen, and I didn’t know what to say or how to explain it. I wasn’t perfect then either. I should have stood up to my father, but you have no idea what it was like to live under his roof, Allie. To live with that…” He closed his eyes and swallowed.

  She thought of the paddle over the kitchen door, and in that moment, she forgave him. How could she possibly hold that one night, one decision against him? Her life had been hard, but his had been worse. He’d been stuck under a father’s dictatorial thumb, unable to escape and leave Katie behind. “I understand, Duncan. It’s okay. It was years ago. You were a kid, and it was just a prom.”

  It was just a prom. She was a grown-up now. There’d be other dances. Ones where she’d wear a better dress. One without ruffles.

  It had happened years in the past, and she had moved on. Achieved other goals. Become a woman, a woman who didn’t need to define herself by one moment, one dance, one date. She had years and years ahead, a destiny that had just begun. What was one night in the great scheme of things? How could she have been so silly as to let that hang over her for all this time?

  It was, truly, just a prom.

  Duncan raised his head and met her gaze again. “You weren’t the only invisible one, Allie. No one saw the real me. Hell, I don’t think they do now. I’ve faked a life, a smile. I’m Duncan Henry, ‘one of the Henrys.’” He put bitter air quotes around the words. “There are expectations connected to that name. An image I’m supposed to uphold. One I didn’t ask for, and don’t especially want. But from now on, I’m making my own image. I’m done being defined by my name and my past. It’s time to make some changes, for all the Henrys. Katie and I talked and she wants to go to rehab.”

  Allie grinned. “That’s wonderful.”

  His smile echoed Allie’s. “And she wants me to take part of the insurance money and pursue this reporter dream. Maybe start over in a new city.”

  Disappointment socked Allie hard in the gut. He was leaving, moving on. Starting a new life. “Well, whichever direction you go, I’m sure you’re going to succeed. Because you’ve got a lot of courage, Duncan Henry, and you are so much more than your name.”

  Then she took one last look at him, turned, and walked away, because she couldn’t stay there another second without crying. She told herself it was better this way. Better to leave now, than to ask the one question she didn’t want to hear the answer to—whether he still wanted her now that he knew who she really was.

  Because she couldn’t bear to hear the answer if it was no.

  She made it two feet.

  “You want to talk about courage?” Duncan said, catching up to her, turning her around. “When are you going to be brave enough to look at yourself and see you how I see you?”

  “That’s all you want, isn’t it?” Allie cried, mad at him for saying exactly what she’d expected, the frustration lodging hard in her stomach. “The beautiful Allie? Instead of Allison Gray? What if all this goes away? What if I start eating every chocolate cake at Joe’s Sav-a-Lot and gain a thousand pounds?”

  “I won’t give a damn.” Duncan cupped her jaw, his thumb tracing over the outline of her lips, daring her to hope, to believe there was more between them. His steady blue gaze met hers. “I never have. I have loved you no matter what you looked like, Allie. I even loved you in high school, because you were the only one who saw the real me.”

  “You…you loved me in high school?”

  He smiled. “Yes. But I didn’t know it until it was too late. You were gone, and that was when I finally knew how much I missed you. How I’d lost out on the best damned thing that had ever happened to me.”

  “I was the best damned thing that ever happened to you? Because I helped you pass math?” she asked, only half teasing, still hardly believing he was saying that about the girl she used to be.

  “No,” he said, taking her in his arms, pulling her to him. “I loved you then, and I love you now, because you listen. Because you’re funny. Because you’re smart and you go for what you want. And yes, because you’re beautiful, Allie.” He placed a hand on her heart. “Inside. That’s the woman I love. You could be covered in burlap or purple dye and I wouldn’t care. I never did. I was just too stupid to realize it and act on it back then.”

  Allie thought of the conversation with Katie, of how she’d said she wanted a man who’d love her regardless of her name or weight. And here he was.

  He’d always been here. She just hadn’t realized it.

  For the first time in her life, Allie looked into a mirror—the mirror of the eyes of the man who loved her, unequivocally—and saw the real Allison. Not the one she had created with exercise and a name change, but the woman underneath.

  She had changed her body with diet and exercise, changed her career with taking on Jerry, but she had never really, entirely changed the rest.

  Throughout it all, the real person Allie had been invisible to had been herself.

  She wanted to laugh, to kick herself for being so clueless. All this time, she’d been Wanda Wolfie. Seeking revenge because she thought she was misunderstood. Taking on a different form, cloaking herself. But she hadn’t been misunderstood by the people who loved her.

  She’d misunderstood herself. She’d been so afraid that if people found out who she really was, they’d reject her. When all along, it was she who had to come to terms with who she used to be.

  She looked out over the pond, at the glassy water, disturbed only by the ducks swimming together from one side to the other, their tails leaving a little rippling wake. She drew in a breath and a peace settled over Allie’s shoulders and she came to terms with this town. With herself, her past.

  Duncan came up behind her, his arms around her waist. “I love you, Allie.”

  She turned in his arms. “I love you, too, Duncan. I always have.” She tipped her chin and kissed him, sealing the declaration with a tender embrace. Later, when they were alone—and in some place much more comfortable and private than the pond—she’d give him a much better taste of what she was feeling.

  After a moment, Allie drew back. “There’s one more interview I want you to do for the Tempest station, Duncan. I’d like to tell my story, on TV and in the Tempest Weekly. I owe Ira a scoop, too. I don’t want anyone else ever to feel invisible again.”

  He smiled and nodded. “You’ve got it. But can it wait, just a minute?”

  “Yeah. Maybe even two.” And then she kissed the man who had stolen her heart years before, a heart no longer tucked away in her notebooks and her diaries, but out in the open for all to see.

  Epilogue

  I’m going to miss you,” Jerry said, then coughed and toed at the ground. “Guess all those books my wife keeps in the can are starting to rub off. I actually said something nice.”

  Allie laughed and reached forward to give Jerry a hug. Shooting had wrapped up on Sororit
y Slumber Party Slaughter, which had been rewritten to take the farm’s tornado damage into account, something Jerry thought gave it a great spooky atmosphere, and the crew was heading back to L.A. She’d be back out there in a month, to start production on her own movie. “What’s next for you?”

  “Got a new movie in the works,” Jerry said, grinning. “You’re gonna love this one.” He held up two fingers on either hand, framing an imaginary poster. “Beautiful Blond Sexpots: Horny to Kill.”

  Allie groaned. “Jerry, that’s just—”

  “Box office gold, baby.” He gave her a grin, then climbed into his black Benz SUV. “And hey, thanks for ordering that cappuccino machine for Leath. He’s about got it mastered, and I think that burn on his thumb’s gonna heal nicely. Oh, and tell your mom thanks for the sandwiches ’cuz airplane food sucks and I’m outta here, Sugar—” He held up a finger and laughed. “Thought I forgot your name, didn’t I? Thanks for everything, Allie.”

  Then he shut the door, shouted at Scotty to gun it so they could get out of this freakin’ hellhole and back to some damned civilization.

  “I think Earl’s going to miss him the most,” Duncan said, coming up to Allie. “As a conversational piece only.”

  She laughed and leaned against Duncan’s shoulder. “Whatever will Earl talk about once Margie’s diner is rebuilt?”

  “Oh, I’m sure he’ll find something. Wait till the movie comes out and Earl’s cameo is up on the big screen. He’ll be going on for weeks about that.”

  “That was pure brilliance on Jerry’s part to put Earl in as the mailman.” She and Duncan headed back up the street.

  Construction in downtown Tempest had already begun. One good thing about Earl—his complaining had gotten the state in here fast to approve funding and reconstruction, if only to shut him up, Allie was sure. Things were moving along at a rapid pace, which had been good for the town’s spirits and the workers who had been unemployed since the tire factory closed.

  Lisa Connelly’s hair salon had yet to reopen. She’d left town right after the tornado, telling everyone she was off to seek her fortune in Hollywood. Allie didn’t tell her how competitive and cutthroat Hollywood could be.