Carolina Home

by Virginia Kantra

  “Is that what you think?” Her voice shook.

  He met her gaze. “Yes.”

  Just that one word, flat, inescapable. Her pulse spurted in panic.

  Get a grip, she told herself. He doesn’t mean it, you can fix this.

  Matt had always seemed so confident, so comfortable, so at ease in his own skin. But a dose of her father could shake anybody’s confidence. “Look, I know my parents can be pretty…judgmental. But you can’t believe everything they said—implied—about you.”

  “I don’t.”

  She was confused. “You can’t think I believe it.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Don’t let them define you. They’ve never been right about me. They’re not right about you, either.”

  “But they’re right about this. Us.”

  “How can you say that?” she demanded. “Why would you think it?”

  “Because I’ve been here before.”

  She stared at him dumbly.

  His shoulders moved under his jacket. “When I was even younger than you. Kimberly…She was slumming with me. I was like some college experiment, a relationship that wasn’t supposed to go anywhere with a guy who would never amount to much. Somebody as different from her parents as she could find. Somebody they’d never in a thousand years invite to dinner at the club. Maybe if things had had time to play out, she would have seen that, or I would have. But I screwed up.”

  “You can’t blame yourself because she got pregnant. It takes two people to make a baby.”

  “Yeah. But I made things worse by wanting to marry her. I thought, my kid, my responsibility.” He stared out over the dark parking lot. “Her parents warned her if she went through with it, her life as she knew it was pretty much over. But she didn’t believe them until it was too late.”

  Allison crossed her arms to protect herself from the evening chill. “I am not your ex-wife.”

  “I know that.” He looked back at her, his eyes shadowed. His voice deepened. Softened. “You’ve got so much heart. So much spine. I don’t see you ever leaving somebody who loved you. I don’t see you ever giving up or walking out, on a promise or a child. You’d stay whatever it cost you, whether staying was the right thing for you or not. Your parents are smart enough to see that. And I’m old enough not to ask you to.”

  She managed not to flinch. “I’m not asking you for a commitment,” she said carefully. Just don’t shut me out. Don’t send me away. “I’m okay with the way things are.”

  His face was hard as stone. “Maybe you shouldn’t be.”

  “You don’t get to decide what’s right for me. Any more than my parents do. I want to stay.” I love you. She swallowed the lump in her throat. “All I need is to know that you…want me, too.”

  “This isn’t about what I want.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t get what I want.” His voice was flat and factual as a brick wall.

  “That’s just sad,” she said. Wrong. “That is the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  A muscle bunched in his jaw. “I’m not looking for your pity. I worked damn hard to get where I am. To get what I need. To provide for my kid. That’s enough for me.”

  Was it? Everyone relied on Matt. Everyone expected he would be there, would stand up for them, would shoulder their burdens without complaint. Without help. She wanted to be the one to share his load, to lighten his life.

  Except he didn’t want her help.

  “What you’re saying is, you don’t need me.”

  He was silent.

  Oh.

  He was silent, and he was breaking her heart.

  “Say something,” she demanded.

  He looked away. “You were the one who said we shouldn’t hold onto things. We shouldn’t make this out to be anything more than what it is.”

  Her heart beat fast and hard in her throat. Her mouth was dry. “And what is it? According to you.”

  Because her definition clearly wasn’t working.

  Matt looked at her then, his eyes deep and regretful. “I guess it’s over.”

  ALLISON WANTED TO stay home from school on Friday. Call in sick. Take a day off. Her head pounded, her eyes and throat were raw and swollen, and her stomach was upset. Classic crying jag hangover.

  But her students needed her, even if Matt didn’t. She owed it to them—she owed it to herself—to show up.

  She took a deep breath, wrapping up the fourth period class discussion. “So through each of these characters, Hester, Bigger, Conroy, the authors are examining the question, How do we define ourselves? And how are we defined by others?”

  The bell rang, releasing them to lunch. Allison looked down at her blotter so she wouldn’t have to face the student tide looking as if she’d spent the night bawling her eyes out over Matt Fletcher. Maybe she would spend the period planning at her desk. She really wasn’t up to the teachers’ lounge today.

  “Miss Carter, do you have a minute?” Thalia hovered by her desk, her face flushed, her eyes dangerously bright.

  Allison summoned a smile. “Of course, Thalia.”

  “Hey, Miss Carter.” Josh shouldered through the rows of desks like a ship escaping harbor, with confidence and easy grace. He looked like Matt, a younger Matt, a carefree Matt, a Matt who still believed he could have whatever he wanted.

  I’ve been here before…When I was even younger than you.

  Her heart clutched. “Josh.”

  “Dad told me to tell you we’re good for this weekend.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “He hired Mrs. Lodge to do the cooking-cleaning thing for a couple of days.”

  Lodge? Her mind fumbled. Cynthie Lodge. The waitress from the Fish House.

  She felt actually, physically sick.

  “So you don’t have to help out,” Josh continued with a wide, genuine smile. “He knew you’d want to spend some time with your folks while they were here.”

  “I…” Message received. “Thank you,” Allison managed.

  “No problem.” He flashed his lightning grin. “Well…I just wanted to let you know. I’ll see you around.”

  No awkward consciousness in his voice, no awareness of adult undercurrents, no wondering why Matt had chosen to communicate through his son instead of calling Allison’s cell phone.

  “You bet,” Allison said.

  Josh glanced at Thalia, some of his assurance leaking away. “See ya,” he mumbled.

  “Whatever,” she said coldly.

  The tips of his ears reddened as he walked away.

  Allison raised her brows. “What was that all about?”

  “I went to his house last night,” Thalia announced. “To work on the article?”

  “Okay,” Allison said cautiously.

  “And we were sort of joking around, you know? About food enhancing performance.”

  Oh, boy. “I take it we’re not talking about athletic performance,” Allison said.

  Thalia smirked. “That, too. Anyway, we were eating this pizza, and Josh sprinkled pepper flakes on his slice and made some crack about how they made him hot. So…” She took a deep breath, her face pink and defiant behind her large black glasses. “I kissed him.”

  “Well. Wow.” Allison regarded her student, admiring her courage. Worried about the social and emotional risk she was taking. “Did he kiss you back?”

  “He did. I mean, he really kissed me, Miss Carter. Tongues and everything. It was great.”

  “Um…Congratulations.”

  “Yeah.” Thalia’s smile faded. “But afterward he got all weird. And he said he couldn’t do this with me.”

  “This,” Allison said, hoping they were still talking about a kiss.

  “The boy-girl thing.”

  Allison sighed in relief and sympathy. “That’s tough. Is there…someone else?”

  “You mean, like Lindsey? No, he…he said he just doesn’t see me that way.”

  Ouch. Maybe blindness ran in the
family. “I’m sorry.”

  “Miss Carter, I don’t know what to do. I really like him. I thought when we started hanging out…He said he liked me. I thought we were friends.”

  Allison’s heart ached for her, so young, so earnest, so hopeful. Memories assaulted her. We are friends…More than friends…What are friends for?

  “I’m sorry,” she said again. “Did Josh ever say anything to make you think he wanted something more?”

  “Like, did he lead me on or anything?” Thalia shook her head. “But I thought…I guess maybe I led myself on. You know, convinced myself something else was there.”

  Allison winced. Right there with you, girlfriend.

  Not that she would ever share her romantic failures with a student.

  “Sometimes wanting something isn’t enough,” she said. “Sometimes you have to look ahead to getting what you need.”

  “You sound like my parents,” Thalia said in disgust.

  I sound like Matt. Allison pushed the thought away. “Are your parents focused on college, too?”

  “I meant, quoting the Stones,” Thalia said. She sang, “‘You can’t always get what you wa-ant…’”

  A grin broke on Allison’s face. She’d have to ask Matt if he knew his philosophy of life was based on the writings of Mick Jagger.

  Assuming she ever talked to him again.

  Thalia regarded her suspiciously. “You aren’t going to say something now about how I’m young and I’ll get over it?”

  “No. I’m going to say that this was a new experience for you. New experiences can hurt. But they’re what make you unique. They can change you. Make you stronger.”

  “Like Hester Prynne.”

  “Exactly.”

  They smiled at one another.

  Joined in the Sisterhood of Women Rejected by Fletchers, Allison thought.

  Thalia sighed. “I will probably get over him. Eventually. I mean, only two years until I go to college.”

  “There you go,” Allison said.

  Only seven months left to run in her teaching contract.

  As silver linings went, it pretty much sucked.

  Eighteen

  “WHAT THE FUCK?” His brother’s voice crackled through the laptop’s speakers as Matt sat at the inn’s kitchen table. Even through the jumpy, disintegrating Skype image, Luke’s fury came through loud and clear. “You should have told me Mom was in an accident.”

  Privately, Matt agreed with him. But he’d let their parents overrule his judgment, and now he had to deal with his brother’s questions and his wrath. “What were you going to do, Luke? You’re thirty hours away. Assuming you could get another leave so soon. Mom didn’t want you to know. Dad said you needed to focus on your mission.”

  “Because when Dad was overseas Mom never told him anything.”

  “Exactly,” Matt said. He watched his brother absorb that before adding, “Just because we’ve got the technology now to keep in touch doesn’t mean we should always use it. How’d you find out, anyway? Meg?”

  “I got a MotoMail from Dawn’s lawyer.” Luke’s tone was clipped and angry, his face carved into sharp angles by the light hanging from the tent pole above.

  Apparently lawyers didn’t worry about the concentration of combatants in a war zone. “What does she want?”

  Luke raked his hand through his short, bleached hair, brushing a swath through the desert dust. “Dawn’s parents are claiming that with Mom in the hospital I can no longer provide a stable living environment for their grandchild. They’re suing for temporary custody.”

  Anger stirred, and a deep, defensive protectiveness. “That’s bullshit.”

  “Yeah. But it might be enough to sway a judge. Family court’s in two weeks.” Luke’s eyes met his through the laptop screen. “You’ve got to be there for me.”

  “I’ll be there,” Matt vowed. Back to back to back.

  “Thanks.” Luke’s fingers drummed on the table. “How is she?”

  “Mom? She’s good. They’re moving her to a step-down unit.”

  “Yeah, you said. That’s good.” Luke nodded a couple of times, apparently unable to sit still. Or maybe it was the twitching internet image that made it seem that way. “I meant Taylor.”

  “You talked to her,” Matt said. He’d made sure of that, giving Taylor the first precious minutes of the video visit before chasing her outside so that he and Luke could talk. “She’s fine.” Allison’s words replayed in his mind. It doesn’t help her to ignore her wounds. “She’s adjusting,” he amended.

  “You’ll take care of her.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “You know I will.”

  Something moved against the back wall of the tent, just outside of Matt’s line of vision. Luke turned his head. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Right.” Matt cleared his throat. “You keep yourself safe over there. Taylor’s counting on you to come home.”

  Matt sat in the quiet of the kitchen, listening to the tick of the clock and the hum of the refrigerator, feeling drained. Empty. It had been three days since he’d told Allison they were through. Three days of listening for the sound of her voice and her footsteps, of missing her smiles and her comfort, of storing up things to tell her only to realize that she wasn’t going to be there at the end of the day, he wasn’t going to see her again unless he scheduled a damn parent-teacher conference or stalked her in the aisles of the grocery store. Three nights of rolling over and not feeling her warmth, of staring at the ceiling and not hearing her breath, of waking up hard and lonely and alone.

  He missed her with a deep, physical ache. Telling himself that he’d done the right thing for both of them didn’t ease the pain.

  But Allison deserved the chance to live her life without the burden of someone else’s baggage. In time, she’d thank him. She’d find another man. A younger man.

  Some nameless, faceless fuck with a shiny future and an uncluttered past who was free to follow his heart. Who could help her follow her dreams.

  Matt took a deep breath, his hands clenched on the table.

  He heard a sound, a scrape, and looked up. Taylor was standing right outside the kitchen door, her face obscured by the screen.

  “Hey, kid.” He dredged up a smile from somewhere, deliberately relaxed his grip. “How long have you been there?”

  “I won’t go.”

  He dragged his mind back from the depths. “What?”

  “To Grandma Jolene’s. I won’t go back.”

  “Whoa, there. Hang on.”

  “If you try to make me, I’ll run away.”

  Oh, Christ. “I said, hang on. Nobody’s making you do anything.”

  “I heard you. Talking. My…Luke said Grandma Jo wants custody. That means I have to go live with them again.”

  “It doesn’t mean anything. Nobody’s going anywhere yet.” Matt looked at her through the screen, four feet tall, strung so tight she vibrated like a fishing line from a screaming reel. He gentled his tone. “Come here.”

  She shifted her weight on the doorstep.

  “Come on. I’m not talking to you through the door.”

  Taylor slipped inside.

  Thank God. He pushed out the chair beside him with one foot. She sat with a wary glance at him.

  Matt scrubbed his face with one hand, choosing his words, arranging his thoughts. He’d always been careful not to criticize Kimberly to their son. He didn’t want to turn Taylor away from her grandparents, either.

  “Here’s the deal,” he said. “The Simpsons—your grandparents—love you. And yeah, they want you to live with them. But your mom, she wanted you to live with your dad. And he asked us to take care of you while he’s away.”

  “Grandma Tess said I could stay.”

  “She wants you to stay. And I want you to stay. We all do. We love you,” Matt said firmly, so there could be no doubt. “So I’m asking. What do you want?”

  Taylor’s gaze was flat and too adult. “I’m a kid. It doesn’t
matter what I want.”

  Recognition jolted through Matt. I don’t get what I want, he’d said to Allison.

  That is the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.

  “It matters,” he said. “To me, to Grandma Tess and Grandpa Tom, maybe even to a judge. But you have to tell us what it is.”

  “I want to stay,” she whispered.

  Matt nodded once, short and decisive. “Then you’ll stay.”

  Her eyes met his, glistening with hope and a desperate longing to believe. “They won’t listen to me.”

  He swallowed the lump in his own throat. “We’ll make them listen. We’ll get our own lawyer. We’ll do whatever it takes.”

  Taylor’s lower lip quivered. The hope welled and spilled over as tears. Turning in her chair, she buried her face against Matt’s arm and let out one quick sob.

  The breath Matt had been holding whistled out. He put his arm carefully, gently around her and held her as she cried.

  And she did not turn away.

  MATT FORCED HIS constricted throat muscles to swallow. “You look good,” he told his mother.

  Tess smiled at him affectionately from her bed in the intensive care step-down unit. “Liar.”

  She looked gray and thin and frail, her color leached by the fluorescent lights and the god-awful blue and white hospital gown. A clear, narrow tube still provided her with oxygen.

  Tom reached through the metal rails of the bed to hold his wife’s hand, the one that wasn’t hooked up to monitors. “Last time he saw you, you were breathing through a machine and covered in plaster. You look great, babe.”

  Matt came to her bedside, leaning in awkwardly to kiss her cheek. She smelled different, an astringent, hospital smell.

  But her eyes were the same, warm, searching. “How are you, Matt?”

  Miserable. There was a sick hollow inside him that no amount of work could fill, a restlessness the ocean could not calm, an emptiness that would not go away.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “You’re the one we’re all worried about. How are you doing?”

  Tess’s brow puckered. “I’m bored with me. Is it the kids? Are they all right?”

  “Everybody’s fine.” He made himself smile, forced himself to focus on the stuff that mattered, the things he could do something about. “Josh drove your new car up here.”