With his eyes glued on his brother’s face, he spoke softly, “Are you okay? Do you want to leave?”
Still, Charleigh remained quiet. It took her a moment, but she pulled back slightly to look Jamie in the eyes and shook her head. They couldn’t leave, and not only because there were so many people there, though, Charleigh didn’t know more than a handful of them. If they left, it would give Claudia real basis to hate her— every other reason was oblivious. Another cause for Jamie’s mother to humiliate her, publicly or in private.
Touching her face, Jamie could see she was flushed. Her eyes were rimmed with pink, but there were no tears. Her pupils were huge in the dimly lighted room, obscuring the emerald of her irises; he noted relief present there in the bright green pools.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Jamie slipped his hand from Charleigh’s cheek, down her arm and entwined their fingers. “Do you want something to drink?”
She nodded, speaking softly, “Some water, maybe.”
“I’ll get it for you,” Jenna offered and disappeared into the crowd.
Jamie looked down at Charleigh as she tried to pull herself together. Nobody said anything, but you couldn’t have cut the tension with a chainsaw. She closed her eyes, letting out a sharp breath.
“Come on,” Jamie whispered softly to Charleigh. He could feel her body relaxing, her heartbeat easing back to normal. “I’ve got a surprise for you.”
A look passed between the two brothers, a warning. I’ll deal with you later, Jamie thought as he led his fiancée toward the dance floor. Kevin cleared his throat, stepped back to let them by.
As Jamie led Charleigh out to the middle of the gleaming surface, the ensemble ceased playing. As if on cue. She looked over to see each member frantically shuffling through a stack of papers on the stands in front of them. Whatever they were doing, which she was sure was a part of Jamie surprise, Charleigh didn’t have a clue.
She turned her attention to Jamie, who was smiling. He looked down at her and winked as the music began to play again.
“What do you think?” Jamie pulled her close.
“This is my surprise?” Charleigh inquired, as they danced slowly. “Am I supposed to be impressed, Mister Matthews?”
“I was aiming for overwhelmed delight,” he replied. “You don’t recognize the song?”
It was familiar. Different. A slow ballad. Slower than usual. More whimsical, though, than she’d heard it before. There were no words accompanying the music, which made it a challenge.
Jamie saw her eyes light up. A signal that she’d figured it out.
“You are a tricky, tricky man,” Charleigh laughed. “When did you have time to do this?”
“My parents always use these guys for holiday parties and company events. This time was no different,” he explained. “Besides, the conductor is a friend of my dad’s. So, I emailed him the lyrics and sheet music a few weeks ago that I found off the Internet and asked if they could learn it by tonight.”
Jamie was obviously proud of himself.
“‘You Had Me From Hello.’ It’s a nice touch, I have to admit.” Charleigh kissed him quickly on the lips and leaned her head against Jamie’s shoulder to enjoy the remainder of the song in blissful silence.
The crowd of guests seemed to stop everything they were doing to watch the couple on the dance floor. It wasn’t only the woman in the shimmering, blue dress or the handsome man in the tuxedo that caught their attention. It was the obvious affection and passion shared between them. It was the kind of feelings every person on earth searched for but rarely ever found. The kind of love that lasts forever.
These two people had clearly found it.
“Our little girl has really found happiness this time, hasn’t she?” Mellisande asked her husband as they watched their granddaughter. She reached out until their hands met.
Grant couldn’t speak, He could only nod; his heart had risen in to his throat.
“Not only Charleigh,” Madie added. “I’ve never seen Jamie so satisfied with anything before this.”
“Gram, I want to fall in love like that,” Jenna sighed. She took a sip of the water she had gotten for Charleigh.
“You will, darlin’. In your own due time.”
Meanwhile, not everybody was caught in reverie. One woman was boiling with odium. Just like her mother, Claudia thought. Always clamoring for attention in some way or another.
She wanted to wrap her hands around the younger woman’s throat and squeeze until her face turned several bright shades of red and then, finally, a dark blue-purple. Until there wasn’t a breath left in her body. Or she could push her out in front of a car on a busy street corner in downtown Manhattan. Oh, to see the horror in Charleigh’s eyes just seconds before impact. With a satisfied smile on her face, she would turn and never look back.
Instead, Claudia went to find her friends. She’d just have to save those plans for another time.
“… Well, this won’t be her first marriage, you know. And it won‘t be her last, either…” Charleigh overheard Claudia say to a group of women as she walked by with Jamie after their song was over. She stopped, pulling Jamie back, to listen in.
The woman was never going to give it up, Charleigh knew this. Claudia would always be on high alert for anything and everything she could use to slander her.
“…She married one of Greg’s nephew’s— a real loser— little less than a year ago, down in that ‘Hog-town’ she calls home. That didn’t last very long, though, because he got her cousin pregnant. When Jamie came to town… with no job or income since her father died… she saw dollar signs…”
The gaggle of women began to laugh at something the evil witch said. Something Charleigh couldn’t quite make out. She was going to keep her mouth shut. Charleigh was just going to let it go. It doesn’t matter, she told herself, I won‘t see any of these people again, so it doesn‘t matter what Claudia tells them. Until…
“The town, her whole family, is a big bunch of white trash.”
“Oh, your mother is horrible,” Charleigh mumbled to Jamie, her eyes growing large with rage. He gave her a sympathetic pat on the shoulder and tried to pull her away. She was planted firmly in place.
“Didn’t Greg come from the same town?” One woman asked. She was wearing a black dress that was too low-cut in front, showing too much skin for a woman her age. Charleigh shook her head with disgust at the sight of the woman’s droopy breasts. Couldn’t she have worn a bra?
“Yes, but thank God I was able to get him out of there before it was too late,” Claudia replied with self-righteousness.
Charleigh sent Jamie a look and stepped toward the group. “I also owe Missus Matthews a big ‘thank you.’ For everythin’ she’s done fo’ me.” She looped an arm through one of Claudia’s, who sneered. Charleigh continued to speak in her most exaggerated southern accent “Who knows where I’d be today if Jamie hadn’t come along and saved me from a life of misery.” She heaved a sigh.
“Well, heck, if he hadn’t paid for me to get these new pearly-whites…” Charleigh tapped on her two front teeth before touching her cheek. “…and that there growth removed, I don’t know what I’d a done. You’re a good ole girl, Claudie.” She slapped Claudia on the butt and walked away. The women stared after her in shock.
“You are unbelievable,” Jamie laughed as they walked to the table where they’d been seated earlier.
“Just givin’ the ladies what they wanted.” She smiled over her shoulder at him.
***
Cereal was much better in the middle of night, in Charleigh’s opinion. Sitting on the counter, alone in the darkness of the Matthewses’ kitchen, she was still happily reeling over everything that had happened earlier. Especially, the mortified expression Claudia had on her face after Charleigh swatted her on the ass.
It was truly a Kodak moment. She smiled to herself as the memory played back in her mind.
And she found out about what Greg had wanted to talk to Jamie
about. A deal had been made with a company from Thailand, through the Davidson offices in Bangkok, to build a new factory in Dallas. A company from Thailand in Dallas? It had seemed strange to Charleigh, until Jamie explained that they already had a North American H.Q. in the World Trade Center there in New York City. Branches of the company were scattered all over the U.S. in Chicago, Los Angeles and Seattle, including another that was being built, through Davidson and Associates, in Miami, and they wanted one in Dallas, as well.
Okay. She still didn’t understand what kind of business the Thai did, but the good news was that Claudia hadn’t locked Jamie in a closet to torture him. She was obviously just nosey, since the business venture had nothing to do with her.
Charleigh licked the last bit of milk off the wooden spoon she had used— since it was the only thing she could find— and hopped down from the counter to take the bowl and utensil to the sink. With her back turned to the doorway, rinsing what she’d used, Charleigh hadn’t realized that she was no longer alone.
The bright fluorescent light overhead flipped on, startling her. She let out a frightened cry. Charleigh squinted, holding her hand up to block the light from her unaccustomed eyes, as she turned to see who was there.
“Oh, I didn’t mean to scare you,” she heard Greg’s voice from somewhere in the room. The bright lights went off and a dimmer one came on over the sink.
“I, uh…” Charleigh was able to feel her way to a stool at the center bar.
“Up for a mid-night snack, too?” He asked, pulling a box of donuts from a cupboard. The man brought it over to where she sat, and pulled out an éclair. “Want one?”
“No, thank you.”
When she stopped seeing spots, Charleigh stood up, took the carton of milk to put it back in the refrigerator. Not sure what to say to the man, she thought it was best to leave. She headed for the door.
“I heard about what you did to Claudia,” Greg said, stopping the young woman in her tracks. “Humiliated her in front of her friends worse than I ever could.”
“I could take her making fun of me, because I know it’s not true. What I won’t, is that she was slandering my family and my hometown.”
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, Charleigh, it’s not exactly you who she hates.”
She turned to look at him, confused. “If what you say is true, then why does she act like that toward me?”
Greg watched her, silently studying her, as he finished off the rest of the pastry. When it was gone, he stood up and washed the stickiness from his fingers.
“It goes back to before you were born, before Jamie was born. It’s about your parents, Claudia and me,” Greg said, shrugging. “It’s about the fact that I never really got over your mother, Charleigh.
“Secretly, I always hoped both my marriage to Claudia and your parents’ marriage would fail. That, someday, I’d be able to get back together with your mother.”
“That’s demented,” Charleigh said, speaking her mind.
“Yes, but it’s true, all the same. I knew how much your parents loved each other, but I still hoped.” He sighed, “And when your mama got sick, I came clean with Claudia. I was going to let her have the house, the kids, everything. I just wanted a clean break so that I could be there when Amanda died.”
“You were going to give everything up for a woman you could never be with.” She wasn’t sure whether or not she should be disgusted. Either way, she didn’t want to know about some guy— who wasn’t her father, by the way— who had harbored feelings for her mother. It was too bizarre.
“But your mother made me realize that I didn’t belong there. I needed to go back to my family.” Greg’s hands were folded on the counter in front of him, his eyes trained on the same surface.
“You confess your boundless love to your wife, though, it’s for another woman. You leave your family to be by said woman’s bedside. When she doesn’t want you, you go crawling back to your wife and ask for forgiveness.” Charleigh spoke honestly. She said what she thought, and she meant it. “I sure can understand why she’d be angry. Not that I think she should have taken you back. Still, holding a grudge against you after eighteen years? That’s no way to live. Or to put your children through such misery. Why not just get a divorce?”
Greg smiled. The young woman’s scenario fit the situation almost to a T, but not entirely. He shook his head. Even in college, Claudia had been a selfish, frigid woman. Breaking someone else down so she could build herself up. She was jealous of Mandy. Her beauty. Of her intellect. Of her confidence, because she wouldn’t be manipulated the same way as everybody else.
He took the box of donuts and put them back where he got them.
“But why hold something that you did against me?” It dawned on her then. “Why does she treat her children so badly?”
When Amanda told him to go back to Claudia— to be stuck in a loveless marriage; no way—he hadn’t wanted to. He did it for his children— Jamie was almost ten back then; Kevin was seven; Jenna, with whom Claudia was pregnant.
“She hates you because you are a reminder of your mother. You have the same demeanor.”
Of that, Charleigh wasn’t so sure.
“You remind her of what I felt for Amanda and not for her. Because you’re with Jamie, she feels like it’s an instant replay unfolding before her eyes. She holds the kids in contempt because they are truly the one and only reason I came back.”
“Well, history does repeat itself, they say.” I’m beginning to believe it does with these two families.
Now, Charleigh rightly saw what Jamie meant when he said his childhood had been a lonely one. She’d thought he was lucky to have grown up with both of his parents alive, together in the same house. From the sound of it, her fiancé and his siblings might had been better off if they’d been raised by a pack of wolves in the woods. At least they wouldn’t have been treated like some sort of obligation.
Life in the Randall house back in ‘Hog-town,’ USA wasn’t bad, but the one thing she’d envied of Jamie was that he’d grown up with a living, breathing mother as a part of his life. That was, until she met Claudia Matthews in the flesh.
“I think I need to go back to bed. To clear my mind of the whole lot that I’ve just learned,” Charleigh said on a sigh as she shook her head. She took one last, long look at Greg. “I feel drained every time you tell me something about my parents that I didn’t know before.” It made her wonder if her parents had really had the kind of marriage she’d been led to believe they had. “Is there anything else I should know? Any other skeletons in your closet that involved them?”
He answered with a shake of his head. “Just that they loved each other and you very much. I don’t want you to think Mike and Mandy’s marriage was a sham like mine, because if any two people had a perfect love, it was them. Everything they did was for you and for the benefit of their life together. You were very lucky to have them as your parents, even if you only had them for a short time.”
“Thank you,” Charleigh replied and walked back up the stairs toward where Jamie slept.
She opened the door to the bedroom they shared. The light from the hallway made it easier for Charleigh to see the features of Jamie’s body, though, she already knew them by memory. How childlike and angelic he looked when he was sleeping.
If there was anything that she was thankful in the whole world for— besides her family and the trivial, materialistic junk— it was that her children would never have to question her love for their father, or for them. Charleigh would make a point of telling them each and every day how important they were to her. They would never have to know about the sordid details of their parents’ pasts. Of their prior relationships and the wounds that never quite healed as a result.
The love that she and Jamie shared had mended what had been undone before. And as romance novel-ish as it sounded, it was true.
Chapter Twelve
Biting down on the end of the ink pen in his mouth, Jamie scanned
his list of friends and family’s names and addresses until he came to the next. Twelve hours at work, with a total three-hour commute in rush-hour traffic, and now Charleigh had him addressing wedding invitations at midnight. Not that he was complaining. It was just that it was such a monotonous task, one that, after a couple of hours, was causing his hand to cramp up.
An ‘NSYNC CD was playing softly in the background. The boy band was crooning something about love and broken promises. Charleigh claimed not to like their music, but she had both of their CDs that were out to date, and she knew every single word of every single song. Jamie felt like taking the disc out of the player and breaking it into a million little pieces. He could tolerate almost any kind of music Charleigh listened to— Al Green and The Supremes had kind of grown on him— but he drew the line on any song where a guy could hit the high notes almost as well as Mariah Carey.
“Terrance and Julie Marcum. Emily Whitfield. Eric and Marianne Mitchell. Why is it that I don’t know any of these people on my list?” He looked over at where Charleigh sat across the table from him. Her hair was piled in a loose bun at the crown of her head; wisps fell down around her face. She wore only a lace and satin nightgown, and one of the straps was beginning to slip down on her shoulder, causing the lace to fold over and reveal the golden apex of her breast.
Pushing her glasses up to the top of her head, Charleigh took her eyes away from the piece of paper with her own share of names and addresses. “Terry was my dad’s attorney for as many years as I can remember. He did Dad’s Will and drew up my annulment papers. Julie’s his wife.”
“Oh, okay. Do we need him close by, just in case anything goes wrong at the reception?” Jamie asked, half-jokingly.
Charleigh laughed. “Well, any skeletons in your closet that I should know about? Any illegitimate children running helter-skelter out there that you forgot to mention?”
You're Gone (Finding Solid Ground) Page 10