Homecoming in November (The Calendar Girls Book 3)

by Gina Ardito

  “Everybody, as in everybody you knew before you came here?”

  I stared down at the tabletop. I did not want to talk any more about my past and the mistakes I’d made.

  “Come with me, Jayne. Get out of the house for a while. It’ll do you good. I’ll check on my mother and then, maybe we’ll go to that new tea shop in town. Or for a stroll on the beach, if you prefer solitude.”

  Solitude. Right. “Uh-huh. And how do I get past them?” I pointed out the window.

  “You walk out the door and ignore them. Just like you do when you go to work. You go about your day, with me at your side.”

  “They’ll start hounding you, you know,” I argued, but he cut me off again.

  “Good. Let ‘em. Now, go get your coat.”

  What else could I do? I got up and grabbed my coat.

  Chapter 14

  Terri

  When I got back to the shop, the place was dark and locked up tight. I still had no idea what I would say to Gary when he arrived. Or even if he’d be willing to talk to me. I mean, if I hadn’t happened to go to that particular meeting today, at Max’s insistence, would he have ever told me about his past?

  Once inside, I relocked the front door and flipped on one tabletop lamp near the window facing the street. A squeal pierced my ears, and the rear kitchen doors swung open. With a sharp gasp, I jumped back.

  So did my aunt. “Oh my God, Terri. You scared me.”

  “Ditto,” I replied, my hand over my hammering heart. “Why are you still here? We closed an hour ago.”

  “Siobhan had an evening appointment with an engaged couple, so I sent her home right after you and Gary left.” She frowned. “Somebody responsible had to lock up. Not Chelsea or Rachel—a grownup.”

  “Chelsea and Rachel are grownups, Auntie.”

  “I know, but—”

  “But, you don’t trust my judgment yet,” I finished the statement with no bitterness, just a calm acceptance. It would take time. I’d put my aunt and uncle through so much heartache in the last fifteen years. I often wondered, if I hadn’t smashed my nose in the ladies room that night at The Lookout a few months ago, how long would I have continued along my destructive path? How many bodies would I have left behind?

  Aunt Andrea pulled me into her embrace, squeezing me tight against her non-existent bosom, those deadly ribs piercing through my boucle sweater. At breakneck speed, I hurtled through time to days before my parents’ deaths, when nothing in the world made me feel better than a hug from my mom. Bridget O’Mara smelled of cookies and roses and, probably because she was plumper than her sister-in-law, gave the softest hugs—no angles or sharp protrusions.

  “Not true,” my aunt said, jerking me out of happy memoryland and thrusting me into cold reality. “I do trust you. I wouldn’t have turned over the shop if I wasn’t sure you were ready to take on the responsibility of a business. Besides, you have Gary to look out for you.”

  Among the questions simmering in my skull since seeing him at the meeting was whether or not my aunt and uncle knew about Gary’s past. I guess I now had my answer.

  Then again, he’d been clean for years. Maybe they knew the truth and hoped his influence would rub off on me. In the grand scheme of my life, I guess it really didn’t matter whether they knew or not. I knew.

  “What are you doing back here?” Aunt Andrea asked.

  I kept up the lie I’d started with Max. “I asked Gary to meet me here after hours so we can go over some new menu options.”

  “That’s wonderful! In that case, I’ll leave you to it.” She headed to the coat rack to grab her gray woolen jacket. As she thrust her arms into the sleeves, she swerved to face me again. “You know, sweetheart, your uncle and I are so proud of you. We know it hasn’t been easy for you. And, I’ll be honest, I was worried we were pushing you too hard too fast. It wasn’t until Gary signed on that I started to breathe a little easier. Poor man. Did you know his wife died in a drunk driving accident?”

  “Umm, yeah, I heard about that.”

  Clucking her tongue, my aunt shook her head. “Such a shame. That precious little boy of his never got a chance to know his mother.”

  Yeah. I’d thought of that. I missed my mom a lot. Would it have been better or worse if I’d lost her when I was eight days old, rather than eight years old? Did anyone ever get over the loss of that one important link? How did kids who were adopted feel?

  Wanna know why I spent so much of my days blotto? To silence the questions constantly running through my mind. The whys and what-ifs have been endless and deafening since the day I learned about my mom and dad. Now that I’m struggling to stay sober, they’re more frequent and louder than ever. So I have to voice them every once in a while or go crazy. Lucky you get to be the recipient of my mental meanderings.

  Aunt Andrea gave me a little wave and sashayed out through the kitchen. Alone, I sat in one of the cushy wingchairs and waited. Soon enough, I heard the back door open and voices in the kitchen area.

  “Terri?” Gary asked.

  “In the front,” I called back. My heart galloped. What was I gonna say to him?

  And suddenly, there he was, standing in front of me. Seriously, the man moved with a quickness and silence that spies would envy.

  “So,” he said in greeting. “That was Max.”

  And that was the last thing I expected him to lead with. “Huh? Oh, right. Max. Yeah.”

  He took the chair across from me, his gaze solemn and piercing. “You don’t need me to tell you to be careful with him, right? I’ve seen a hundred Maxes in my time in the program. They’re all the same. Bad news.”

  “What are you, my mother?” I snapped and regretted it before the last syllable left my mouth.

  The glint in his eyes turned steely. “No. I’m your business partner.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

  “Yeah, you did. And that’s okay. Your friendships outside of work are none of my business. I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”

  I laughed. “Max can’t hurt me.”

  “Yes, he can. Worse, he can drag you down. Look, you won’t like hearing this, but he’s not serious. Not about you, not about the program, not about anything but getting his next big acting gig.”

  The “not about you” part stung my pride. The fine hairs on my nape bristled. “And you know this from the inordinate amount of time you’ve spent with him? You may not wanna believe this, but I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself. I don’t need you hovering over me. You already said my friendships are none of your business. So keep your nose out of what goes on between me and Max, okay?” Well, that was stupid. And insensitive. And so not what I wanted to talk to him about right now. I took a deep breath, started over. “Umm…I just wanted to say…I’m sorry…about your wife. I had no idea.”

  “Don’t.” He held up a hand. “If that’s why you brought me back here, forget it. You didn’t know her, you didn’t know me back then, and if it weren’t for this tea shop, you wouldn’t have cared what happened to ‘Gary the scary bartender’s’ wife. In fact, I’d lay money you would tell your friends she died to get away from me.”

  Crap. My cheeks flamed, and my galloping heart thudded to a halt, cracking in half. The briefest flash of memory lit up in the darkest corner of my brain. “I said that once to you, didn’t I?”

  “Not really. What you said was ‘She probably left you because you’re a miserable SOB with no sense of humor and the personality of a rotting corpse. I bet she couldn’t wait to be rid of you.’” He shrugged. “Or something along those lines.”

  Double crap. “It was the booze talking. You know that, don’t you?”

  He shook his head. “The booze gave you the stones to say it. But it was what you honestly thought of me.”

  “I didn’t know you! I still don’t. You never told me about your wife, about your son.” To my shame, tears stung my eyes and spilled out. “Did you ever once tell me that you were an alcoholic, to
o?”

  “No.”

  “No,” I said at the same time.

  “Dad?” a voice said from behind me. I hadn’t realized until that second that I’d been shouting at him.

  “It’s okay, Chris,” Gary told him, calm and even-toned. “Just stay in the kitchen please. I’ll be there in a few minutes and then we’ll head home.”

  “O…kay.”

  I waited a breath or two before continuing in a softer volume. “You know plenty about me, but if I hadn’t been at that particular meeting today…”

  “It’s not exactly a story I bring up in casual conversation.”

  “You could’ve found the time to share it with me. Do you remember when I told you I was going into rehab? Do you have any idea how hard that was for me? To go up to you, of all people, and say, ‘I’m sorry. I’ve screwed up my life and I’m going upstate to dry out. I hope you can forgive me’?”

  “And I told you I was proud of you. And I promised I’d be here when you got back. I think I delivered on that promise, don’t you?”

  I shook my head. “You don’t get it. I was terrified of you. I didn’t call you the ‘scary bartender’ on a whim. You scared me all the time with the way you growled, the insults you hurled at me, how you looked at me. Like I was useless. Like I was trash. That night would’ve been the perfect night for you to say something like, ‘I know how hard this is gonna be for you, but you can do it. I know you can, because I did it.’”

  “And once again, you’ve got it all wrong. I didn’t think you were useless. Or trash. And I didn’t say anything like that to you that night for the same reason I called you all those names. Every time I looked at you, I saw the old me. The old Claire. The way we tried to hide our pain in a haze of booze. I wondered what might have scarred you so badly. Because I knew your aunt and uncle; everybody knows everybody in this town. They were decent, hardworking, affectionate people. I didn’t understand why someone who lived with them could fall headfirst into a bottle. It didn’t add up for me. And if I looked at you too closely, I saw a woman who seemed to have everything going for her, but still managed to toss it all away for a buzz night after night. You think I scared you? You scared me, honey! When I looked at you, all I saw was someone who seemed to have it all and still didn’t cope. And if you couldn’t do it when you seemed to have everything going for you, what chance did I have? Me. Who grew up with an abusive alcoholic father. Me who’d already lost so much, thanks to the booze and who now spent every night surrounded by the lure of the one drink that could take away the pain for a few hours.” He bent forward, hands on his knees, and added in a hoarse whisper, “You don’t know how many nights, after I yelled at you or threw you out, I’d look at all those bottles surrounding me and think, ‘What the heck. I’m never gonna amount to anything anyway. My son would be better off without me.’ And then I’d picture Chris in my head, crying over my coffin, and I’d shake myself loose from whatever poison you’d wafted into the air around me. That boy means everything to me. And you, the drunk you, were a threat to what I was desperately trying to build, with him and for him. I couldn’t let you get close to us.”

  “But you have now.”

  “Yeah. I have now. Sometimes against my better judgment. Because, like it or not, you do something to me. After Claire died, I built this wall around myself that no one but Chris could penetrate. Until you came along. You got around my wall and for a while, the fact you did angered me. Because you make me feel everything but numb. You frustrate me and scare me, but I’m also so damned attracted to you, it physically hurts. I find myself drawn to you, to this real you, the one who’s sitting in front of me now, angry and scared and confused and so kissable with that little dip between your eyebrows. You make me want to stay sober, not just to prove myself wrong about you, but also to prove to you that it’s possible to climb out of the bottle and stay there. And be happy every day that you made it out with something worthwhile to cling to. I’ve got Chris. What do you have to cling to, Terri?”

  I could barely speak. The tears streamed down my cheeks, and my throat closed around my bitter confession. “Nothing. Nobody.”

  “Wrong. You’ve got me. If you want me.”

  ♥♥♥♥

  Jayne

  To my surprise, I stepped out of the house with Iggy, and the reporters loitering on my sidewalk retreated farther away from me. And there were less of them than there had been earlier this morning. I knew it wasn’t because they’d given up and gone home. Not so soon.

  I looked over at Iggy, who wore a proud grin as he surveyed the quiet. “What’d you do?”

  He flushed a dark red from throat to cheeks. “Nothin’.”

  “Don’t tell me that. Did you call Sam?” Even though I’d specifically told him not to?

  He shook his head. “Nope. I wouldn’t do that. Maybe one of your neighbors got tired of them blocking the street and complained to the town. Or maybe some of them got that new story in their nostrils you mentioned earlier.”

  “Maybe,” I replied with some doubt. I still believed Iggy responsible for their sudden disappearance. Not that I wasn’t grateful. Personally, I wouldn’t care if he went full Marine on them and stormed my front yard with a platoon of soldiers. Anything to give me peace. At this stage, I could only hope whatever had chased the others away would eventually spur the stragglers into abandoning me, as well. The sooner I saw the last of Cole Abrams and that Carter woman, the better.

  At the hospital, when we turned the corner to the hallway leading to Mrs. Zemski’s room on the sixth floor, a short, curvaceous woman with strawberry blond hair cut in a sleek bob, strode to Iggy, her heels clacking on the tile floor. “Thank God you’re here. She thinks she’s leaving today.”

  “Oh, yeah? What’d Dr. Humphrey say about that?”

  “That she needs an MRI and maybe a CT scan before they’ll even consider discharging her. I’ve already caught her twice trying to get out of bed to look for her clothes. She insists she’s getting dressed and going home. She won’t listen to me.” At that moment, she looked in my direction, smiled with genuine warmth, and held out her hand. “You must be Jayne. I’m Irenka. Iggy’s sister.”

  “Umm…hi.” I shook her hand.

  “Thanks so much for insisting Iggy bring her here yesterday. I doubt he would have convinced her to come at all if you hadn’t been there with him. She can be so stubborn.”

  “I’ll just go in and see her,” Iggy said. “Make sure she understands she has to stay a little longer.” He turned to me. “Would you mind waiting out here?”

  Right. Because hanging around hospital corridors sure beat hanging around my comfortable house. But what could I say? He needed to talk to his mother and I’d probably be in the way. “No, I’m fine. Go.”

  “Well, I could go for a cookie and a cup of tea,” Irenka interjected. “Wanna come down to the hospital cafeteria with me? It’s not exactly five-star dining, but it beats lingering in the hallway.”

  I liked her. She was engaging, open, and friendly—words that used to describe me a long time ago. And I sensed my meeting his sister was Iggy’s ulterior motive in dragging me here. “Sure,” I said.

  We took the elevator to the first floor and strolled into the cafeteria, which was crowded with employees and visitors alike, grabbing a quick bite or lingering over coffee. True to her word, Irenka ordered a tea and two chocolate chip cookies. I opted for a bottle of water and a crisp, red apple. After paying for our orders, we found a table in the back, the one with one wobbly leg, which explained why it was unoccupied.

  Irenka grabbed some napkins, folded them, and wedged them under the table, giving us a steadier surface. I took a sip of my water and bit into my apple, enjoying the sweet-tart combination of the juicy flesh inside.

  “I’m glad I finally got to meet you,” Irenka said over the rim of her cup, “Iggy said you were special. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure what he meant by that. ‘Til now.”

  The piece of apple lodge
d in my throat. “No,” I croaked, coughed to clear the obstruction then spoke again. “No, you’ve got it all wrong. Iggy’s just watching out for me for a little while. Because of…” Shame stole my ability to continue.

  “Because of the thing in Ohio,” Irenka finished for me. “Yeah, he does stuff like that. A few years ago, a little girl went missing in a town about twenty miles from here. Soon as he heard, Iggy drove over there to volunteer as part of the search party. And in the end, he was the one who found her. A crazy old neighbor had the poor child imprisoned in an underground bunker where he planned to ‘groom’ her to be his wife. She was nine. That itty-bitty thing was traumatized so badly, even when she was safe at home again with her family, she’d have these nightmares and scream these bloodcurdling screams that woke the neighborhood. She couldn’t go to school, couldn’t bear to be touched or held by anyone. She was in therapy, but she was going to have a tough haul ahead of her. Iggy came home, packed his gear, and went back to that little girl’s house. Told her he would stay with her night and day for as long as she needed him. And he did. Every night, his car was parked directly across from her bedroom window. No matter what time she looked out, he’d give her a little wave or flash his brights to let her know he was there, guarding her from the monsters. When she finally went back to school, he walked with her, and then hung out outside ‘til she was done. This went on for months.”

  I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. Every word Irenka uttered filled me with a sense of awe and reminded me of the promise he’d made me in my kitchen a mere half hour ago. I’m not going anywhere as long as you need me. Hell, even when you think you don’t need me anymore, I’ll still be around. Semper fi. Always faithful. I live by those words. Count on it. Count on me.