Last Chance at Love

by Gwynne Forster

  “With Dad. But I haven’t had the energy to talk with Mom. She wears me out just by the way she says hello.”

  Allison couldn’t help laughing at Sydney’s candidness, a trait he’d had since early childhood. “Tell me about it. I have to go; I haven’t changed my clothes, and I’m meeting Jake for lunch in half an hour.”

  “Have a good time down there... And, Allison...”

  “What is it?”

  “Stop scrutinizing every blink of the guy’s eyes. If you look for a problem, you’ll find one. That man is honest and honorable, and you will not dispute me on that. When your relationship gets to the point where he starts talking about the future, he’ll tell you everything. But if you pry into his life to get information for that article you’re writing on him, kiss him goodbye. You listening to me?”

  “Yes. I am.”

  “Take care of yourself, sis. Don’t court trouble.”

  She hung up with his words still ringing in her ears.

  After lunch in one of the hotel’s restaurants, she strolled along the River Walk with Jacob Covington holding her hand, telling herself not to let the idyllic setting sweep her out of reality.

  “Did you notice that every couple we meet, regardless of age, is holding hands?” she asked Jake.

  “Impossible to miss it. Want a cruise along the river in a Yanaguana Cruiser? It’s a great way to see the River Walk.”

  “I’d love it,” she said. “How many times have you visited San Antonio?”

  “Several.”

  When he didn’t elaborate, she wondered if those visits were associated with a broken love affair. It never pays to ask him direct questions, she reminded herself, unless he initiates the topic.

  Resting against his broad chest as the flat-bottomed boat glided slowly along the narrow stream, she wished she didn’t love him, for she knew it had to end. Nothing beautiful in her life had ever lasted except Sydney. The more she thought of it, the more she hurt, and without considering her actions, she turned in his arms and buried her face in his chest.

  At first, he seemed to relish her move, wrapping her closely to his body, but she remained there, never wanting to move, and he stepped back.

  “Something isn’t right with you. What is it?”

  She laid her shoulders back, brushed the hair from her face, and smiled. “I just hate so terribly for...for this to end.”

  “This what? Being here, the tour, or...or...us?”

  “Here, the tour. You know what I mean.”

  “I have a feeling it goes deeper, but you will eventually tell me.”

  When at last the cruiser returned them to the Hyatt Regency, she welcomed the opportunity for privacy in her room, if only for a few minutes. “What time do we meet?” she asked him.

  “Five-fifteen in the lobby. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll look over my notes now.”

  “Of course.” She said goodbye, noticed that he didn’t kiss her, and wondered at the coolness he projected. Perhaps she imagined it.

  His lecture and book signing that evening took place at a local high school. Although his audience consisted mostly of adults, more than a tenth were high school teenagers, juniors and seniors. On an earlier occasion when he spoke about his life, he had held her nearly spellbound, but she had attributed that to his subject matter. On this occasion, he mesmerized her with a talk she knew he had not planned, but had decided upon when he realized he had an opportunity to make a difference in the lives of thirty or forty African-American teenagers.

  She took notes as fast as she could write, gave up, and turned on her recorder. Speaking directly to the youths, he told them not to use race as an excuse to fail in life, but to educate themselves, work hard, and meet every situation in life with honesty and integrity.

  “Be kind to others, and lift up your less gifted brother or sister,” he told them. “Don’t aim to be good at what you do; aim to excel. Then, no one can stop you, and no one will want to stop you.”

  She stood aside while the audience surged toward him. He spoke to each youth, signed several hundred books, and shook hands with most everyone present. She thought it his most grueling engagement of the tour but it seemed to have invigorated him.

  “I promised you we’d eat dinner around seven-thirty,” he said as they were leaving the school, “and it’s ten after nine. This looks like a nice restaurant; let’s go in here.”

  After a relatively simple meal of blackened redfish, boiled parsley potatoes, and string beans, with peach ice cream for dessert, he reached across the table for her hand.

  “This isn’t going to sit well with you, and it certainly displeases me, but I have to leave tomorrow morning. It can’t be helped, and I’m sorry. I’ll change your ticket if you don’t want to stay longer.”

  She supposed she looked a sight, as her mother often said, with her lower lip hanging down and her right eye narrowed to a slit. “Look, you’ve missed almost a third of your dates, and I’m facing three full pages of small newsprint in a standard-size newspaper. What the devil am I going to write? Most of what I know about you isn’t printable.”

  “You must know that I wouldn’t make these abrupt changes if I could avoid it.”

  She tried to squelch the anger that overtook her like a rising storm, but couldn’t. “Maybe some day, you’ll tell me—the woman, if not the writer—what you do in your other life.”

  He removed his hand, leaned back, and stared at her. And she saw nothing friendly in his gaze or in his demeanor. “It doesn’t pay to get so fanciful. You’ve let your imagination run amok. Shall we go?”

  Too late, she remembered Sydney’s advice, but she was damned if she’d apologize. “Yes. Let’s” was all she said until they reached the hotel’s lobby.

  “If you’ll give me your ticket, I’ll have it changed and leave it at the desk for you. When are you leaving?”

  She thought for a minute. If she didn’t give him the ticket, she would have to pay her fare back to Washington. “Tomorrow afternoon,” she told him, got the ticket out of her handbag, and gave it to him.

  “You can’t imagine how sorry I am about this,” he said, turned, and left.

  “Jake!” she called after him, and her heart seemed to jump into her throat when he stopped, turned, and waited. He said nothing, and she knew it was her move.

  She walked to him. “Jake, I’m sorry I caused this rift between us, but you must realize that I am frustrated. You said you can’t help it. Well, I don’t believe you would lie to me, but knowing you are honest about it doesn’t ease my anxiety about getting the story I’m being paid for.”

  “I’m aware of that, and I’ll do my best not to disappoint you again.”

  When he turned toward the elevator, without thinking, she said, “Whatever awaits you, go with God.”

  His eyes widened, and then a frown covered his face. “I... Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

  “My grandmother used to say that to me every time I left her house, and it always made me feel so safe,” she said.

  He reached for her hand and held it until they reached the door of her room. “I have to get a seven-ten flight, so I’m not going in. I’ll leave your ticket at the desk.”

  Both of his arms encircled her, and for a brief second she felt the pressure of his mouth on hers. “We haven’t cleared this up,” he said, “but we will. I’ll meet you at the airport Monday morning. Safe journey.” He hugged her briefly, waited until she closed her room door, and left.

  She told herself not to question his ability to get her ticket changed between ten in the evening and five in the morning when he had to leave the hotel. Considering how much there is about him that I don’t know, I may find out that he can walk on water.

  After breakfast the next morning, she stopped at the registration desk and asked whether she had mail. Th
e clerk handed her a long white envelope addressed to her in what she assumed was Jake’s bold handwriting. “I’d give anything to know how he did it,” she said to herself, observing that he had booked a four o’clock direct flight. Puzzled, yet admiring him, she headed for the Alamo, the one site she wanted to visit.

  * * *

  Jake walked away from Allison, his heart heavy and his anger near the surface. Anger at the chief for disrupting his life, at himself for permitting it, and at Allison for not believing in him, although from his behavior on the tour, she had a right to question him. He hadn’t wanted to leave her, and especially not with a chill hanging over them. He walked into his room, saw the message signal flashing on the phone, and, suspecting that the chief was his caller, called him back on his cell phone.

  “Did you phone me?” Assured that he had, he asked, “What’s up?”

  “Just making sure you get to that hearing at eleven-thirty tomorrow morning.”

  “When I agree to do a thing, I do it,” he replied, not bothering to show his annoyance. “She’s not coming back with me. I want you to get her ticket changed for a three or four o’clock flight tomorrow.” He read the ticket numbers to his boss. “I told her her ticket would be at the registration desk when I leave the hotel in the morning. I’ve never lied to her.”

  “Whew!” the chief said. “Man, you don’t half do anything. I hope she knows how fortunate she is.”

  “Really? When I told her of your latest plan for me, she practically bit off my head. This is my last break in this tour. If the capitol is about to be burned, call someone else.”

  The long silence didn’t impress him. “I see,” the chief finally said. “I’ve only looked at this from the point of view of our needs here. No doubt this has been a burden for you.”

  “It’s been a burden for the stores and event planners who purchased cartons of my books and had to dispose of them as best they could, and there’s no telling what kind of story that paper will print if she loses confidence in me. And she has plenty of grounds.”

  When a fledgling agent, he would have considered himself reckless to speak to his boss in such a way, but after eleven years of faithful and selfless service with the same boss, he was entitled to speak his mind.

  “Are you ever planning to tell her the whole story?”

  “I’d need your permission. What do your other operatives tell their wives, for instance?”

  “We’ll discuss this when you come back. I had no idea I’d put you in such a predicament. The ticket will be there before you leave. See you tomorrow.”

  “A lot of good that does me right now,” Jake said aloud and began to pack. The next morning, he stopped at the desk and assured himself that the exchanged ticket had arrived. The chief had ways of accomplishing the nearly impossible, and for this once, he was grateful.

  He went from the airport in Washington directly to the Senate Office Building and walked into the chamber at eleven twenty-five for the closed hearing scheduled to begin at eleven-thirty.

  * * *

  Frustrated and increasingly agitated at her inability to get a grasp on Jake’s public persona, which was so unlike the man she knew privately, Allison paced around her office at home, certain that she faced a hostile grilling from her boss and humiliation at being labeled incompetent. She understood why other reporters had managed to write nothing more than bland, uninteresting pieces on him. He shrouded himself in privacy, revealing only as much of himself as he deemed relevant.

  She answered the telephone hoping to hear Jake’s voice, but instead she heard the snarling words of her boss.

  “I called you at the hotel and discovered you’d checked out. What have you got to say for yourself? I’m not spending my money to make it convenient for you and Covington. I—”

  She interrupted him. “He had to cut the engagement short and left early this morning, but didn’t tell me where he was going. He got my ticket changed, and I got back a couple of hours ago. For your information, I am sitting here working on this story when I should be asleep, tired as I am.”

  “Hmm. Well, as long as you’re working at it. But I don’t see you getting excited like you found out something good. I don’t want a story telling me how great he is, the papers have been full of tripe like that on him. You find out what he’s like when nobody’s looking, and put it in that story. You hear me?”

  She did, indeed. “I’m doing my best.”

  After musing over her dilemma as to what she could write that would be interesting to readers, she stopped short. Oh yes, I will definitely do my best. It’s my career I’m dealing with here. I know he went to college, but what year? Did he graduate with honors or not?

  The next morning, she got into her four-year-old Mercury Sable and headed for Maryland. I’d better stop by Matty’s Gourmet Shop and get some gingersnaps in case I get stranded, she told herself, and maybe I ought to fill up my tank. She bought two boxes of her favorite snack food, a ham sandwich, and a bottle of water at Matty’s, stopped by Shell, filled up her tank and bought the maps she would need, and set out for Reed Hollow, Maryland. If her luck held, Jake would have chosen some other time to visit his mother. Somehow, she didn’t think his being there a possibility.

  Around three that afternoon, she saw a wooden sign pointing to Reed Hollow and turned onto that road. Though it was paved and allowed for two-lane traffic, all else about it suggested that she would find a tiny hamlet, run-down housing, and few, if any, accommodations.

  She stopped at a small general store that sat alone on the deserted road. “I’m looking for Mrs. Covington,” she said to the old man behind the counter. He looked up at the ball of brown twine hanging from the ceiling, pulled a little harder, and cut the length he wanted. After tying a parcel that he had wrapped in brown paper, he pushed it aside, placed his hands flat on the counter, and looked at her.

  “And why, might I ask, would you be looking for Annie Covington?”

  Taken aback by the question, she told the truth. “I’m writing a story on her son, and I wanted to find out if she could add anything to what I’ve written.”

  He rubbed his whiskered chin and peered at her through his gold-framed glasses. “You mean young Jacob? We’re right proud of him around here.” He walked to the door. “Go down that way a piece till you see a big white silo, turn onto the road beside it, and drive till you see a white house. Can’t miss it; only white house in these parts.”

  * * *

  She brought the car to a stop in front of the white bungalow, said a prayer, and got out. If Annie Covington refused to talk with her, she would have lost more than information for a story; indeed, she already risked the complete rupture of relations with Jake. If his feelings for her weren’t as strong as she believed, she would certainly lose him.

  Annie Covington opened the door before Allison knocked. “Hello, there,” she said. “I heard a strange car pull up and came to see who it was.” She opened the screen door and stepped out on the porch.

  “Mrs. Covington, I’m Allison Wakefield, and I’ve been accompanying Jake on his lecture and book-signing tour for a newspaper story I’m writing about him. I was won—”

  When she smiled, Allison saw the strong resemblance between mother and son. As tall as Allison and with a well-proportioned, slim figure and streaks of gray hair at her temples, Annie Covington exuded charm, warmth, and friendliness.

  “Come on in. Jake hasn’t told me a thing about this. Hmm. Where’d you come from?” She led the way down an inlaid beige-and-brown-tiled floor to a living room that was tastefully furnished with brown-velvet-covered sofa and chairs, Persian carpets, and reproductions of Matisse and Price paintings. The huge stone fireplace struck her as most inviting.

  “I’ll bet this fireplace was Jake’s idea,” she said to his mother.

  The woman turned and stared at her. “
It definitely was, and if you know him that well, you’re more to him than a reporter. Where do you live, and who told you I was in Reed Hollow?”

  Impressed by the woman’s astuteness and candor, she made up her mind to level with her, no matter what question she asked. “I live in Alexandria, Virginia, and I drove from there to here because I wanted to talk with you.” She recounted how she found her. “Jake told me about his childhood, or some of it.”

  Annie Covington smiled. “I can imagine ‘some of it’ was all he gave you. He’s very private, was so as a child. Getting personal information out of Jake is like pulling hens’ teeth.”

  Good Lord, thought Allison, so that’s where he gets the twinkle!

  “If you’ve been driving all day, you must be hungry. The bathroom’s at the end of the hall. I’ll get you something to eat.”

  After washing her face and hands, Allison peeped into the kitchen. “Mind if I come in?”

  “Goodness, no. I would have asked you to come back here while I fixed it, but I didn’t know how you’d feel about sitting in the kitchen.”

  Allison sat at the kitchen table and turned the chair so that she could watch Jake’s mother. “Mrs. Covington,” she said, “my dear mother is such a snob that it’s my great pleasure to be around someone who isn’t. And if it’s all right with you, I’ll eat here at this table.”

  “You sure? I thought we’d eat in the dining room. My son’s most proud of that room. Wait till you see it.”

  “Whatever you like. Can I help you with anything?”

  “Thanks, but it’ll be ready in a second. I just have to fry these crab cakes. That’s one—”

  “You’re giving me crab cakes?”

  “Why, yes, provided you like them.”

  “Like them? I’m crazy about them.”

  Annie beamed, her pleasure evident. “These are fresh; I pulled a couple of bushels out of the bay this morning. Just finished picking the meat out minutes before you drove up.”

  “I can hardly wait,” Allison told her, her salivary glands already anticipating the taste. “No wonder Jake loves to fish. I’ll bet the two of you fish together sometimes. How far is the bay from here?”