She murmured, “We’ll do our best,” and kissed my cheek. “I love you, Aunt Jilly.”
Later, Jo and I sat with Mom and Ellen at table three while the little ones played in a corner booth, Matthew trying valiantly to keep up with Millie Jo and Rae.
“You need sleep, Jilly Bean,” Joelle observed. “And it’s not from staying up watching the fireworks, I know it.”
“Everyone needs to back off,” I grumbled, hiding behind a long sip of coffee; I knew I was forcing my husband to walk on eggshells with my bad attitude, and I felt guilty for that, but was unable to relent. Though it had been fun out on the water last night, all of us crowded between the motor boat and the pontoon to watch the Fourth of July spectacular, by morning’s light I was still fostering the tension, and Justin’s patience was growing thin.
“Baby, this is getting old,” he’d said before leaving for work. “We’re talking when I get home.”
“It’s pregnancy that does it,” Mom contributed, trying to be helpful. “I know when I was pregnant with you I wanted to pick a fight every other day.” She snorted a laugh and concluded, “Maybe it’s no wonder Mick left around then!”
Joelle shot Mom a scorching look. I set down my cup with a clack and demanded, “Is that supposed to be a hint?”
Mom rolled her eyes, not about to get sucked into my angry vortex. Just to my right, she reached and cupped my chin, as though I was about five. “Jillian Rae, what a ridiculous question. But here’s a hint: Justin loves you with all his heart and you’re hurting him by acting this way. As though he has any control over what his ex-wife does or says.”
I felt the sting of tears, knowing she was right.
“But Aubrey said…” I stammered.
“Who cares what that dumb bitch says?” Jo asked, low. “She hasn’t changed a bit. She should be ashamed of herself. I’m glad Justin told her off. He probably wishes he would have years ago.”
They were determined to prove me wrong. I heard myself admit miserably, “I feel like I can’t get a sense of things anymore.”
None of them realized what I meant, the depth of my fear over what I’d just said. Gran or Great-Aunt Minnie would have understood, in a heartbeat; I missed my grandmother and great-auntie so much that I could hardly draw a full breath. I hated that I couldn’t talk to either of them; right now, I’d have given almost anything. Aunt Ellen patted my forearm. “When Justin comes for lunch, you go hug him and tell him it’s all right.”
I swiped at my eyes and then nodded, determined to do just that. “I will, Ell, don’t worry.”
Lunch was busy, the tourist season mobilizing into full swing, sending city folk to the lake country in droves. Jo took care of the porch tables so I wouldn’t have so far to walk, though that meant I was in charge of the entire counter and all the booths in the main room. And so it was that I was distracted enough that I didn’t see Zack Dixon until he was already seated at the counter, on the far end, closest to the outer door.
“Are you ready?” I asked him, with no hint of acknowledgment or recognition that we’d been introduced prior to today. I was sweating, my temples damp, my Shore Leave t-shirt limp with the humidity, and he was openly staring at me, his creepy, too-close-together eyes taking their fill. I ignored this against my better judgment and insisted, “Well?”
“You have a minute to sit and chat?” he asked, leaning forward on his elbows on the counter. I took a small step away; his nose was far too close to my breasts, even at over two feet away. He informed me, “I’ve been out here a bunch of times, but you either weren’t working or Camille took my table.”
“Yep, that’s right,” I said rudely.
“I’ve been enjoying Landon,” he said, choosing to ignore my tone, smiling as though we were having a pleasant conversation. “Even though there’s not much to do at night. I get a little bored. What do you do for fun around here? Swim, maybe?”
I forced myself to look into his silvery-blue eyes, realizing that the last thing I should do was communicate unease. I clenched my jaw. “Are you ready to order?”
“Jillian,” he implored, low and far too intimately. His eyes made me undeniably ill, though I could not otherwise get any sort of read on him. In the same tone of voice, he murmured, “You’re so sexy. Sex just drips off of you. Does your husband tell you so?”
I blinked and then ordered in no uncertain terms, “Never speak to me again.”
I walked away before he could reply, straight through the swinging two-way door to the kitchen, where I found Blythe. I pulled him aside and said, “There’s a guy at the counter I don’t like, a tourist. Can you take his order?”
Blythe frowned, studying my face for more explanation; this kind of thing wasn’t like me at all. “Sure thing, Jills. Did he say anything you want to tell me about?”
Shit. Bly was overprotective and could not afford to get in a fight for any reason. I said quickly, “No, he’s just really annoying. I don’t want Jo to have to deal with him, either.”
Blythe leaned into the kitchen to tell Rich, “Hey, Gramps, I’ll be right back.”
Huge, strong, intimidating (when he wanted to be) Blythe took Zack’s order, and I studiously avoided his end of the counter after that, though he watched me with absolutely no outward qualms. When he finally left, I scooped up his basket and restrained the urge to chuck it directly into the trash. It was then that I noticed what appeared to be handwriting on his napkin.
What the hell? I wondered, turning it so that I could read the words, though probably I should have known better.
Jillian, please don’t be mad at me. You’re beautiful. I want to speak to you again. Thanks for lunch.
I almost gagged. As though he’d written something much more offensive, I crammed the napkin deep in the garbage and then went to wash my hands. In the familiar employee bathroom I studied the tension in my eyes, smudged beneath with shadows, and suddenly realized that Justin hadn’t shown up for lunch.
Go to your husband. Finish up here and then go to him and make everything all right, and tell him about this shit with Zack.
First I packed a bag of food and then pit-stopped at home to change from my grungy work clothes into a maternity sundress, a pretty yellow one, and unpinned my hair, brushing it silken-smooth over my bare shoulders. Rae was still with Ruthie at Mom and Aunt Ellen’s house, so I drove alone around the lake to the filling station, where my husband had worked weekdays ever since he’d graduated high school. The business had originally been his grandpa’s, Dodge’s father, Jacob Miller, who’d passed away back when Justin and I were in junior high.
My spine relaxed a little as I saw Justin’s silver truck in the familiar parking lot, next to Dodge’s rusty work truck. There were three cars in the customer spots, vehicles waiting to be repaired. Justin and Dodge worked on all engines, including boats. Out back, near the huge service dock, were gasoline and diesel pumps, where all manner of watercraft came to refuel when the station was open. I parked beside my husband’s truck, feeling an unexpected glow of warmth as my eyes flickered to the red lettering on the white siding above the three service bays, reading MILLER SERVICE STATION, LANDON, MN. Halfway to the front entrance I realized I’d neglected to grab the lunch I’d packed for Justin, and was about to head back to my car when the sound of a voice from inside the first service bay met my ears. My footsteps faltered.
“If you’d just…” The rest of the statement was spoken too low for me to hear. But I needed no more than that to understand that Aubrey was here. A firebomb seemed to explode somewhere between my stomach and my throat.
“Leave, now,” I heard Justin say, and there was a tone in his voice to which I’d never been privy, a flat, dark edge.
“Not until you listen. You never listened to me, you asshole,” Aubrey cried, louder this time, and I rounded the corner of the open garage. Justin stood facing away from the door, his hands curled around the top edge of his workbench, wide shoulders taut with tension. All I could see, however, m
y gaze narrowing to a pinpoint of white-hot fury, was Aubrey, close behind him and reaching as though to put her hands on his back.
I felt capable of projecting flames from my eyes and was stunned to hear my voice emerge without a tremble. “If you speak to my husband that way again, you will be fucking sorry.”
Aubrey spun around. Justin turned more slowly, imploring me with his dark eyes. He shook his head just slightly but I could not spare him a glance. I felt if I looked away from Aubrey I would lose some battle with her. I wanted to kill her even more fiercely than I had the other night, some small, detached part of me slightly startled by these bloodthirsty thoughts.
“I need to talk to Justin and it’s none of your business,” she said, enunciating his name, speaking the words with deliberate slowness, as though to a child.
Justin recognized that I was very near to causing her bodily harm; with that low, dangerous tone in his voice he said, “I am not going to ask you again. You have nothing to say that I care to hear.”
“There’s plenty I haven’t said to you,” Aubrey insisted, stumbling slightly as she turned back toward him, and I suddenly realized that she was drunk. I could smell booze emanating from her and I stood at the open door, a good five paces away. The afternoon sun made a hot oblong shape on the dirty floor at my feet. The air here smelled familiar, of motor oil and turpentine. The baby kicked at my belly and I wanted desperately to start crying, but I would not give Aubrey the satisfaction.
Justin let her comment slide and sidestepped her to come to me, but she snatched out her hands and caught his left bicep; he was wearing an old black t-shirt, one with the sleeves torn off, and that her palms were upon his bare skin created a buzzing force field of rage within my chest. Clinging to him, her voice shrill with insistence, she cried, “You screwed me over first, way before I screwed Tim. You know it’s true.” She started crying in little pathetic huffs and persisted, “I needed someone. It wasn’t my fault you looked like a fucking circus freak.”
With a great deal of dignity, Justin detached himself from her grip, but immediately she reached for him again; before I even knew I’d moved, my right fist clamped around a large hank of her auburn hair, yanking her head sideways. My husband responded like lightning, catching me against his chest and carrying me outside. He directed his quiet, intense words into my ear. “Jilly, she’s not worth it.”
I struggled furiously, anger clouding all sensibility, wanting nothing more than to be allowed to finish what I’d started with Aubrey, but Justin’s arms were iron. He held me close despite my throaty, inarticulate protests. With no room for argument in his tone, he said, “Baby, I won’t let you get hurt on account of me.”
Tears gushed over my cheeks. I demanded breathlessly, “Let me go, Justin, I mean it.”
Aubrey followed us and she wouldn’t quit, standing with hands on hips, goading me, “I had him first, Jillian Davis, never forget that. I left him. And he begged me to stay. Begged me.”
She delivered these words like white-knuckled punches, and I felt them in the gut. Behind me Justin tensed even further, but with quiet, if forced, calm, he said, “Jilly, she has no power to hurt me except through you. Don’t let her.”
“Fuck you, Justin,” Aubrey snapped. “You know it’s true. Look me in the eye and tell me it’s not true.”
At that moment I saw my father-in-law walking up the path from the lake, his aviator sunglasses in place, drying his hands on a frayed blue towel. He was whistling, but the instant he caught sight of the three of us the sound died on his lips. His steps stalled as he appraised the scene; perhaps five seconds passed before he resumed his route. He came to a stop near his son and me, pushing the aviators up on his head as he asked, “Justin Daniel, what’s going on here?”
Just the simple fact that he used Justin’s name rather than referring to him as “boy,” which was his customary affectionate nickname, belied Dodge’s concern.
Justin cleared his throat roughly. “Aubrey was just leaving.”
“Dodge, this isn’t your business!” Aubrey had the audacity to snap, but, like Justin, Dodge retained his cool.
“You’ve done enough damage to my family in the past that I do believe it is my business, young lady,” Dodge said, and Aubrey’s attitude deflated, if just slightly. Dodge continued, “You’ve clearly had too much to drink on this otherwise fine day, and so I will drive you back wherever you came from.”
Justin gently released his hold on me. I moved straight to Dodge’s arms, clinging to his bulk as I cried, hating myself for breaking down in front of Aubrey this way, too revved up at present to stop. Dodge made a sound of comfort and patted my back. I pressed my face to him, sensing Justin’s aching concern; I was hurting my husband by acting this way, but I was too upset to deal with that knowledge right now.
Dodge said, “Jilly-honey, you head on back to the cafe and have a cup of coffee, all right? It’s all right here. Go on now, honey. Justin will be along in a minute.”
I did as he requested, refusing to look at Justin as I passed him. I drove home instead of going back to Shore Leave. I didn’t want to see anyone right now, could not deal with explaining why I was such a wreck. Our cabin was occupied by nothing more than sunbeams and dust motes, far too quiet without the usual bustle of four people. I sat for a long time on the porch swing, smelling the pine sap as the sun drifted behind the peak of the roof. I watched the line of afternoon shade advance across the yard, keeping the swing in gentle motion with my right foot. As much as I truly wished I was a better person than this, I replayed Aubrey’s words like a scratched record, my mind catching repeatedly on the word begged.
Justin, I thought painfully, cupping my curled right fist within my left hand, holding both under my chin. Tears leaked over my face like a faucet left running. I wanted to clutch his shirtfront and demand answers to the questions crashing through my head; at the same time, I didn’t fully want to hear his responses.
Oh Justin. Oh God, I can’t bear to think of how much you must have been hurting back then. Did you really beg that bitch to stay? Was it because you couldn’t be without her? Or because you just didn’t want to be alone? Oh God…
I thought of the August night close to six years ago, when Dodge first told me that Aubrey had left Justin. I’d found Justin that night, sitting on the boat landing dock; the memory of his bitter anger rushed back to me, the despair emanating from him like a heat wave. I told him what I really thought of Aubrey that night, and pleaded with him to come back to Shore Leave for coffee in the mornings, as was his habit before the accident. And still over two and a half years had passed before I even admitted to myself how I felt for him, that I was in love with him.
Jilly, stop this, I reprimanded. You know he needs you. He loves you, never doubt that.
It wasn’t that I doubted it. But Aubrey’s words stung deeply; of course she’d intended that.
What if he hadn’t had the accident? Would he still be married to her?
Jillian. Enough.
He begged her to stay.
I tipped my forehead against my folded hands and gave way to sobs. No matter how I reassured myself, no matter how unfounded, I was jealous as hell. Thank God Ruthie was watching Rae at Mom’s house, that Clint wouldn’t be home until late evening. I didn’t even want to see Joelle. Anger and self-pity battled for the upper hand.
I want a fucking cigarette. Oh God, I want Gran.
The thought of my grandmother, with her brusque attitude and kind, observant eyes, made me cry even more miserably. She would know what to say, how to make me feel better. She would smooth her hands over my hair and set me straight, put everything into perspective again, and the pain of missing her made my ribs feel tight. I pressed the base of both palms to my closed eyes, fingers tangled into my loose hair, and so I didn’t see or hear Justin climb the porch steps until he crouched on the porch beside me and gently stopped the motion of the swing with his right hand.
“Baby,” he said softly. He must
have walked over from Shore Leave.
I choked back my sobs, stubbornly keeping my eyes covered, refusing to acknowledge his presence with a response. Justin knew me well enough not to push; he didn’t say anything else but I could sense him studying me, just as clearly as I could sense the way it wounded him to witness me in obvious distress. The baby kicked repetitively, as though to encourage me to quit behaving like a child; Justin waited with quiet patience, his hands curled around the edge of the seat on either side of my thighs.
I wanted to be in his arms. I wanted to feel his warmth and strength against me. I wanted him to tell me that Aubrey was lying, that he’d never once been so broken that he begged her to stay with him.
“I don’t want to talk about it right now,” I whispered, my voice a sandpaper rasp.
“Well, I do,” he said, not so much a challenge as a statement of fact.
“Well, I don’t.” The edge in my voice could have honed a knife blade.
“Jills.” I could tell there was a lump in his throat. My heart jerked and then took up a rapid thudding, but still I did not look at him. He whispered, “Don’t be like this.”
“Don’t tell me how to be!” I flared, still hiding behind my hands. If I looked at him I would crack.
“I can’t help what she does, let alone says,” he said, quiet and reasonable.
I finally dropped my hands, using my fingertips to scrub at the tear tracks on my cheeks, keeping my eyes averted. Justin was kneeling near the swing; he shifted to cup my knees, caressing with his thumbs. I was still wearing the yellow sundress, my feet bare. I braved his dark eyes.
“How long had she been there before I got there?” I asked, my voice unpleasantly hoarse.
Justin’s jaw tightened enough to communicate that my question offended him. He observed, astutely, “You’re trying to pick a fight.”
Wild Flower Page 17