by Alison Stone
“What about you? You ever get married?” Mary Clare noticed he didn’t have on a wedding ring, but that didn’t mean much with guys. Especially guys who worked with their hands.
He laughed. “No, not me.” He glanced down at his hands as if to check for a ring. “I haven’t found the right one.” He looked up slowly and they locked eyes.
The wicker on the back of the chair poked through her thin blouse, making her itchy, antsy. She studied her fingernails. “Better than finding the wrong one.”
The sound of a passing car filled the awkward silence. After a moment, he said, “Your brother and I weren’t that bad to you, were we?”
“You guys teased me mercilessly. When I got my braces. When I wore my boy band of the month T-shirt. When I got the spelling bee award.”
“Who studies the dictionary?” His tone held a mix of humor and disbelief.
“Exactly what I’m talking about.” Their knees bumped when she moved to the edge of the cushion and jabbed a finger at him playfully. “I was proud of that award. I beat out the reigning champion.”
Jesse held up his hands in mock surrender. Lines creased the corners of his eyes. “I didn’t realize the spelling bee was still a sore spot. I apologize. I was a jerk back then.”
She turned her head. The warmth in his brown eyes pierced her hardened heart. She blinked, then looked down, hoping her face wasn’t as red as it felt. “Apology accepted.”
Amanda’s distinctive laugh floated through the screen door from somewhere deep inside the house. Mary Clare scooped up her phone from the wicker coffee table. “Sounds like they’re having fun in there.”
“Should we go back in?”
The phone in her hand rang. “One sec,” she mouthed, seeing the caller ID of her lawyer.
“Hello, Sal. Any news?” Holding her breath, she went down the porch steps. The entire outside world closed in around her.
“It’s not good.” Her lawyer’s ominous tone sent goose bumps sweeping across her arms.
She pressed the phone to her ear, trying to seal out the street noise and her thumping pulse. “Tell me. What?”
“There’s no equity.”
She grabbed the handrail and her butt brushed the step before she locked her knees and stood upright. “We paid ten years on the mortgage. There has to be equity.”
“Chip took out a second mortgage.” She could imagine her lawyer sitting at his desk, balancing his expensive black pen on the back of his fingers, debating how much to tell her. “You’re upside down.”
Gripping the railing, she slowly lowered herself onto the step and covered her eyes. “We owe more on the house than it’s worth? How can that be?”
“Chip’s name is the only name on the title of the house. Legally, he had every right to take a second mortgage.”
She rubbed her fingers across her damp forehead. “What am I going to do? I was counting on that money. The equity was supposed to be part of the divorce settlement.” A million questions bounced around her brain. What about the townhouse?
“We’ll get the paperwork. We’ll figure out how this was missed in the settlement discussions. We’ll restructure the settlement.” Sal’s voice of reason couldn’t penetrate the mounting wall of panic.
She bowed her head and pressed her cold fingers against her throbbing temple. “He hasn’t exactly been good about paying me the support he already owes. He’s claiming he’s between jobs.” The dizzying blades of ornamental grass swayed and pitched in her peripheral vision.
She had tried to be a good soon-to-be-ex-wife. They had a son. But Chip had lied. He had been punitive. And Mary Clare refused to roll over and let him have his way.
Oh, he was going to pay.
“I’ll get back to you on Monday. Tuesday at the latest,” her lawyer said in a tone that suggested he was used to talking people off the ledge.
She ended the call and turned around.
“Everything okay?” The concern on Jesse’s handsome face smoothed some of the rough edges of anxiety threatening to overwhelm her.
“Exes.” She tried but failed to sound glib. She crossed her arms and rested her hip against the railing. Hot tears betrayed her. She blinked a few times to clear her blurry vision. “No, I’m not fine. Chip disappointed me. Again.” She gulped back the lump of emotion choking her and swiped at her tears. She forced a quivering smile. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to unload on you.”
“I’m here if you need someone to talk to.”
“Thanks. But no.”
He placed his warm, solid hand on her forearm. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.” She wasn’t sure of anything anymore. How would she afford to live? She lifted her cell phone to her chest, holding it between flattened palms. “The man I’m divorcing apparently doesn’t have the money I thought he had.” The words came out on a shaky laugh. “Forget it. It’s not worth talking about. It’s not going to change anything.”
“Whatever you want.” The uncertainty in Jesse’s eyes mirrored her feelings. He turned to go back inside, then stopped with his hand on the door handle and glanced over his shoulder. “You sure you don’t want to talk?” She swore his brown eyes could see into her soul.
She touched her chin with the edge of her phone. “I’m sure.”
“Maybe the track tomorrow will be a good distraction.”
“The track?”
“I thought Henry would want to go to the motocross track with his cousin.”
“The track?” she repeated, trying to get her head around why Henry would be interested in going to a motocross track. He wasn’t the athletic type. He swam and played a little tennis, but that was it. He had never expressed an interest in watching a sport before. “I hadn’t really thought about it. We probably should unpack at my mom’s.”
“That’s too bad. Maybe you can work around your plans.” Jesse held the door open for her.
“Oh, I don’t know.”
“Sometimes it’s good to be flexible. About plans,” Jesse added, almost as an afterthought. He cocked one eyebrow in a mischievous gesture, then spun around and strode into the kitchen, announcing that he’d like another piece of birthday cake.
As a Type A personality, Mary Clare had generally been a planner and pretty rigid about her plans, but suddenly being flexible looked appealing, especially when it came packaged in nice jeans and a wicked smile.
Chapter 3
“How’s everything going?” Jesse tossed his keys on the cracked laminate of his father’s kitchen counter and stepped into the adjacent living room. His sister looked up from her book.
“Dad’s anxious tonight.” Lynne pointed with her thumb toward Dad’s bedroom door at the end of a short hallway in their manufactured home. A trailer. “He’s tired, but I can hear him shuffling around in there.” The frustration was evident in her tone. “I pulled out his pajamas but he keeps pacing. Turns on the light. Turns off the light. He gets more agitated when I ask him to get ready for bed. After an hour, I gave up.” She snapped the book closed and stood. “I’ve read the same page ten times and I still don’t know what I read.”
“I’m sorry you had a rough night. I got it from here.”
“You were supposed to take over two hours ago. What happened?” Lynne gave him a look. A look that would have had him quaking in his motocross boots when he was thirteen. A look that no longer worked when he was fifteen and realized an older sister and an overworked Dad couldn’t possibly control him.
“Bill invited me to stay for Zach’s birthday. His son loved the dirt bike.”
“Great.” She tossed the book down on the couch. “Meanwhile, Peter called. He had to work a double. I have to grab the boys from their friends.” His sister and her husband played tag team to keep all the pieces of their lives together.
Jesse scrubbed a hand across his jaw. “You should have texted me.”
She lifted her palms in a what-are-you-gonna-do gesture. “I know I could have. I just figured you’d be home any minute.
” She gave him a knowing stare, then said, “If you had a family of your own, you wouldn’t feel the need to spend all your time at your friend’s house now that you’re back in town.”
Jesse playfully jabbed his big sister in the arm. “Aren’t you and Dad family?”
Lynne sighed heavily. “You know what I mean.”
“I do.” The two words dripped with sarcasm. Mary Clare’s long red hair flowing down her back, her infectious smile, and her shapely legs popped into his mind and just as quickly he dismissed it. All of it. Getting involved with his best friend’s sister wasn’t in anyone’s best interest.
“Just because Mom deserted us doesn’t mean—”
Jesse patted his sister’s head, a patronizing gesture he adopted when he hit puberty and six foot in the same year. “You don’t have to worry about me. I’m perfectly content the way things are. Keeping things loose and cool.” He shuffled his feet and bobbed his head from side to side as if he was easing out kinks. A boxer getting ready for the fight. He laughed.
“Who would even have you?” His sister rolled her eyes, then grew somber. “Have you thought more about what the doctor said?”
“About Dad? No way. We’re not putting him in a nursing home.”
“We have to be realistic. The bad days outnumber the good. Come to think of it, there hasn’t been a good one in a while.”
“I miss when we could joke with Dad about one of his senior moments.”
“Yeah, we were all in a state of wishful thinking. We can’t wish for a different future. We’re going to have to act soon. You can move back to California. Get back to your business. Dad wouldn’t want to know you’ve changed your plans because of him.” Lynne got on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. “Not that he’d ever know,” she added, a hint of wistfulness in her tone that depressed the heck out of him. “Night, little brother. Sleep well.”
“Night.”
After his big sister left, Jesse flicked on a hall light to chase away the shadows. He pushed open his Dad’s bedroom door and found him sitting in the corner chair on top of the pajamas Lynne had struggled to convince him to put on. In the gathering darkness, Dad sat hunched over his steno pad, scribbling notes.
“Hi, Dad. Isn’t it hard to see?” A knot formed in Jesse’s stomach. His father had aged a lot these last few years. The ravages of Alzheimer’s had rounded his once square shoulders. Mussed hair compounded the look of confusion haunting his eyes. Jesse often wondered how things could have been different if his mom had stuck around. Would she be carrying the burden of taking care of her much older husband or would this have been the event that made her leave? Ultimately Jesse came to the same conclusion that he always had: he was glad Mom left years ago because Dad deserved to have someone looking after him who didn’t abandon her family because she wanted a better life.
A better life.
That’s what she had written in a note Jesse was never supposed to see.
Dad looked up from his figuring. “Can you help me? I don’t know what day it is.”
Jesse snapped out of his trance and crossed the room and slipped the notebook from his dad’s hands. The smell of Dad’s VO5 hair tonic always sent Jesse’s thoughts back to his childhood. On the rare evening when Dad had arrived home before Jesse had gone to bed, Dad would put out two bowls of vanilla ice cream on the small kitchenette—Mother claimed she couldn’t afford the calories and Lynne was more interested in TV.
After he and Dad shared stories about their day, Dad would give Jesse a piggyback ride to bed, the scent of Dad’s hair tonic sticking with Jesse as he drifted off to sleep.
Jesse flipped through the notebook. His father had listed the days of the week followed by the date. Page after page. A stack of newspapers littered the corner of the small bedroom. Jesse picked up the top one. “Today’s Friday, Dad.” He handed him the newspaper and pointed to the date. “The date’s on top.”
His father had taken over his grandfather’s garage in his early twenties. Dad had loved fixing cars. Claimed it was like a puzzle. Now with his mind failing, Dad found everyday life to be a puzzle.
Puzzles more and more difficult to solve.
Jesse ran his thumb across his father’s shaky handwriting. His list of dates. Like time marching forward, erasing memories.
The stale air in the tight space was suffocating. Jesse reached behind the chair and flicked the switch on the AC unit mounted in the window. The unit whirred to life, blowing frigid air.
Dad furrowed his brow. “I get confused sometimes.” The look in his eyes—a mix of fear, sadness, desperation—tugged at Jesse’s heart and made him feel empty. Numb.
Dad was Jesse’s hero. His rock. The parent who stayed.
Jesse set today’s newspaper on the dresser. He’d have to find another way to help his father feel grounded. Taking his father’s elbow, he helped him stand. “We all get a little mixed up sometimes. Let’s get you into bed.”
An uncertain smile flickered on his dad’s lips. “Is it bedtime?”
“Yes.” Jesse handed his father his PJs.
Jesse sat and gave his father directions rather than physical help. When his father wandered toward the door in his pajama top and jeans, Jesse gently reminded him to finish getting ready for bed.
Jesse rolled back the covers. His father inched back until his legs hit the mattress, then cautiously lowered himself to its edge. “Sure is nice having you here, Jesse.”
Jesse met his father’s lucid gaze and didn’t trust his voice. “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.” His growing business could wait. Would have to wait.
Dad reached for the lamp and cast them in muted darkness
The sun hadn’t set that long ago.
Dad had watched Grandpa waste away in a nursing home. When Jesse was younger his dad would tell him, “If I get like that, take me out back and shoot me.” Back then it was a joke.
A hypothetical.
Now, Jesse would tell his dad that he promised he’d always be taken care of. That’s what the social worker told him. Don’t make promises you can’t keep. Just tell him he’ll be taken care of.
But Jesse owed his father. His dad deserved to live out his days at home.
Jesse tucked the sheet around his father’s shoulders. Just like his father had done for him when he was a little boy. Nostalgia and sadness thickened in Jesse’s throat. He was thankful his father couldn’t see his eyes.
“You’re a good son.” In the darkness, his father’s voice sounded frail. Elderly. “Such a good boy.”
“Love you, Dad.” Jesse backed into the hallway and pulled the door shut. He stood motionless in the narrow space. An emptiness expanded inside him, reminiscent of the little boy who knelt on his bed and stared out the window into the dark. He would hold his breath while headlights grew closer on the country road, then deflate in disappointment as they disappeared.
Mom hadn’t come home that night. Or any other. He couldn’t imagine where she found this “better life” when he and Dad and Lynne were right here.
Jesse braced his hand against the doorframe and listened. His father grew quiet, unlike Jesse’s worries.
Too early to call it a night, Jesse went to the kitchen and grabbed a beer from the fridge, then walked through the small trailer flipping off lights. He pushed open the door to his bedroom. Nothing much had changed since his high school days. Blue comforter, a few motocross plaques, and the closet door hanging off its tracks. There hadn’t been much reason for updates. He hadn’t lived here since he graduated from high school, only returning recently to care for his dad.
He flopped onto his bed. Propping his pillows, he turned on the television while taking a few long sips of his beer. He turned down the volume so he didn’t disturb his father, one thin wall away. He flicked the channels until he got to the Weather Channel. Tomorrow was supposed to be a gorgeous day.
His thoughts drifted to Mary Clare. Funny how circumstances brought them both to Mills Crossing at the same time, if o
nly temporarily.
He set his beer on the dresser next to his bed and closed his eyes. Warm, cozy, comfy. The day’s events replayed in his mind.
Mary Clare jogging toward the steps. Her cute figure in khaki shorts. Her beautiful blue—
No, no, no. He took another long swig of his beer. Not happening, man.
A little boy waiting at the window for his mom to return taught him the heartache of loving someone too much wasn’t worth it. Besides, Mary Clare wasn’t going to be here beyond the summer. And only God knew how long he’d be here. After that, his life was on the opposite coast.
It didn’t matter.
Mary Clare wasn’t summer fling material.
And Jesse only did flings.
The hydraulic sound of a garbage truck’s compactor roused Mary Clare from a deep sleep. She lay for a moment longer with her eyes closed, trying to recapture an elusive feeling that was quickly slipping away. A delicious shiver accompanied a stretch as a vague memory of Jesse visiting her dreams flashed across the back of her eyes.
It was a bad idea to explore any part of this any deeper, but she couldn’t help herself. The vivid memory of his strong hands, his clean scent, his soft lips sent tingles low and deep. Her subconscious mind was playing tricks on a woman who had been alone too long. Jesse was hardly her type.
Nor was she his.
Yawning, Mary Clare opened her eyes and blinked against the sun. Flowery wallpaper came into focus. Then the good-for-nothing lace curtains. Her mother didn’t believe in window shades. She believed in kids rising before pillow lines creased their faces to tackle the list of chores taped to the bathroom mirror.
“Mom?” Henry’s face peered around the corner.
Mary Clare opened her arms and her son ran over and wiggled in for a hug. “Did you sleep okay?”
He nodded. “Uncle Bill’s old bedroom is cool. He has a lot of cool stuff.”
“Grandma raided the attic for you. Got down all his old toys.” She kissed the top of his head. “You think this place might be okay for the summer?”
He stilled under her loose hug. “I kinda miss my room and stuff.”