The Mud Sisters

by Edie Claire

  There was no response. As Jamie was lifting her arm to knock again, she saw Eric through the window, approaching in his own good time. She withdrew the hand and stepped back. The memory assaulted her with a rush.

  What are you doing? He had asked her with a grin. He was younger, slimmer.

  She had stood at the door smiling back, a duffel thrown over her shoulder. What does it look like? she had teased, brushing past him front to front, pressing her chest against his on the way. I’m moving in with you.

  Eric opened the door. Jamie blinked, attempting to stuff the past back wherever it had come from—and quickly. The Eric she saw before her now was a little older and a little heavier, but the added pounds were no liability. His face and figure were merely fuller, more mature. He didn’t look like a kid anymore. He looked like a man.

  “Good morning,” he said evenly. Coolly.

  “Good morning,” she returned carefully, every muscle in her body tense. She wasn’t used to making nice and being polite; she wasn’t use to giving a flip what other people thought of her. But she could not afford any missteps. It was too important that she stay on Eric’s good side.

  “Are you hungry?” he offered, stepping back for her to enter.

  “Very.” She walked in, giving him such a wide berth on the way that her backside scraped against the dryer. She swallowed. “Is Teagan here?”

  “No,” he answered tonelessly, leading her through the office and into the kitchen via a swinging door she had failed to notice the night before. The layout of the additions was strange, indeed. “She left for work hours ago.”

  Jamie’s heartbeat quickened. “Oh.”

  Eric kept his back to her as he puttered in the cabinets. “What are you hungry for? We’ve got a couple kinds of breakfast bars, plus toast and bagels. There’s cereal, too, but it’s on the stale side, I’m afraid. Or I could scramble some eggs.”

  A mental flash showed Jamie the younger Eric—holding a spatula and a crusty iron pan, fighting to scrape the last shards of tough, over-browned eggs onto a grimy plate.

  She couldn’t help herself. She chuckled. “Um, I think I’ll pass on the eggs. Thanks.”

  Eric looked back at her, but his gray-blue eyes were devoid of mirth. There seemed to be a question in them. Did she remember?

  Jamie averted her gaze. She didn’t want him to know what she was thinking. “Breakfast bars would be great,” she said with forced cheerfulness. “But don’t feel like you have to wait on me. I can scavenge up my own glass of milk. I’ll make myself a cup of coffee, too, if you have it.”

  He turned from her without comment, placing several boxes of breakfast bars on the counter along with an empty glass. As she settled onto a stool, he went ahead and poured her some milk, then put the tea kettle on the stove. “All we have is instant coffee,” he said stiffly. “Is that all right?”

  “Perfect,” she answered. Instant had been her usual, at least as far as she could recall.

  “Sugar, no cream?”

  Jamie’s eyebrows lifted. He wasn’t guessing.

  She fidgeted on her stool, not looking at him. “That’s right.”

  When he said nothing else, she released a heavy breath. Could this encounter possibly be any more awkward?

  Left with nothing else to do, Eric retrieved his own coffee cup and leaned against the far counter. Jamie selected several bars and began to nibble. Both sat in silence as a hot blue flame danced under the tea kettle.

  “So,” Jamie said finally, the silence fraying her nerves even more than the talking had, “I was hoping to see Teagan this morning before she left. Was she—” she broke off, unsure how to ask the elephant of a question that stood between them. She didn’t ordinarily have trouble coming to the point, but these were hardly ordinary circumstances. “Was she all right?”

  Eric watched her, his face showing nothing besides the cool wall of distance he seemed determined to keep between them. “She was fine,” he answered. Then, as if remembering something he was embarrassed to have forgotten, he started and pulled a folded piece of paper from underneath a magnet on the refrigerator door. “She left you a note. Here. Sorry about that.”

  Jamie took the paper from his hand and unfolded it, resting her wrists on the counter to steady them.

  Jamie,

  Sorry to take off, but I hated to wake you—you do need the sleep. Help yourself to anything you want for breakfast; Eric will make sure you get lunch. I’ll be back mid-afternoon sometime.

  Teagan

  Jamie read the nearly illegible scrawled lines, then reread them. She breathed deeply, then read them again. No “dear” at the beginning; no “love” at the end. But this was just a note, not a letter. Besides, Teagan wasn’t the effusive type. What mattered more was the implication in the middle. Teagan obviously expected her husband to treat Jamie to lunch. Didn’t that alone give her the answer she was looking for?

  Jamie let out her breath with a gush, folded the letter, and laid it on the countertop. Her cheeks felt hot; her body warmer. Teagan didn’t know. Everything would be fine.

  She looked back up at Eric with a genuine smile. “So, you got drafted to entertain me,” she said good-naturedly. “Sorry about that. It’s really not necessary. I assure you, I’m quite used to fending for myself. Lunch included.”

  For an instant, her announcement seemed only to heighten the coolness in his eyes. But just as quickly, he smiled back at her. It was as forced a smile as her previous ones, but it was there. “I don’t mind helping you out,” he said unconvincingly. “You can only do so much with one good arm. Besides, Teagan has given us a mission.”

  Jamie’s eyes widened. “Oh?”

  The tea kettle whistled. Eric poured the water into a mug bearing the curious message: “I [Heart] Antiques Roadshow,” added some sugar and a spoon, and handed it over. “She wants me to take you to Oakland and drive you around. See if you remember any of the classroom buildings or someplace you might have lived.”

  Jamie stirred her coffee slowly. The driving-around-Oakland thing sounded like a good idea, given that the sooner she remembered everything, the sooner she could regain control of her life. But being back on the Pitt campus with Eric… there were just too many things that could go wrong with that. Things she didn’t want to think about. “I see,” she answered. “That was thoughtful of her. But you don’t have to take me. I can catch the bus.”

  They both knew she had no intention of taking the bus. Weekend service from the suburbs to the university was nonexistent, not to mention that the temperature was below freezing and she was too weak to walk any distance.

  Eric did not dignify the suggestion with a response. “We can leave whenever you want. Traffic shouldn’t be bad on a Saturday.” He glanced at his watch, then straightened. “I thought I might do some work in the garage for a while. You finish breakfast and let me know when you’re ready to go. Okay?”

  Jamie looked up at him. He was determined to play the chauffeur, determined to fulfill Teagan’s request. Perhaps he was also trying to prove something. “All right,” she responded tonelessly. “Thank you.” Perhaps it would be good for her to remember more about what had happened between the two of them, along with everything else. She couldn’t help but wonder why they had broken up. And whether there was anything she could do now to defuse the aggravation her proximity seemed to be causing him.

  And vice versa.

  ***

  The ten-year-old boy stared at Teagan with puffy eyes. He was small for his age, and even though the standard ER stretcher bed proved too narrow for many patients, his skeletal frame seemed lost within it.

  “I wasn’t trying to kill myself! I wasn’t! Why won’t no one believe me?”

  “I believe you,” Teagan answered easily. Oddly enough, she did. Emotionally disturbed children used all manner of methods to attempt suicide, most of which were too ill-conceived to be effective. But slashing one’s palm in a shallow X didn’t seem the act of a child who truly wanted to
bleed to death.

  “You did hurt yourself, though,” she continued smoothly. “Why did you want to do that?”

  He stared down at his sutured and bandaged hand. “It didn’t hurt that much. Can I just go home now?”

  Teagan considered. The typical self-destructive, attention-seeking “cutter” carried enough baggage to fill a freighter. She was reluctant to draw conclusions prematurely, but this boy didn’t seem to fit that mold. He had no history of acting out, he answered questions about his family with the same slightly bored tone as would most emotionally healthy fourth graders, and his parents seemed not only concerned, but genuinely bewildered.

  Perhaps some sort of club initiation? She had seen and heard of stranger things.

  “What does the mark mean?” she asked. “Why didn’t you make a T, or a V?”

  The boy looked at her as if she was crazy. “It don’t matter what you make,” he argued. “It just got to bleed.”

  “Why does it have to bleed?”

  “So it’ll work!” he replied, exasperated.

  Teagan tried again. “But what does the blood do exactly?”

  “It seals it!” The boy seemed suddenly self conscious. He lowered his voice. “You know… the brotherhood.”

  Images raced through Teagan’s head in a whirlwind. She heard her own voice, youthful and bossy. She saw her hands digging along the shore of the lake, scooping up fistfuls of dripping mud.

  We don’t have to be blood sisters. That’s not hygienic. But we can be MUD sisters!

  Jamie’s voice now, giddy and carefree. Ew! You are SO gross, Teagan. Why does it have to be mud?

  Well, we have to have something, don’t we? To seal it. Your blood is supposed to mingle, but mud can mingle, too. And besides, it rhymes. Then we’ll be real sisters. You in, or not? Here, you take this pile. She had picked up a huge blob of mud and carried it to where Jamie sat on the bank. She then dropped it at the other girl’s feet, where it promptly splashed all over both of them. Jamie squealed with annoyance, but wound up laughing.

  You’re crazy, you know that? But fine. I’m in. We’ll be mud sisters. “Sisters of the Mud.”

  Not like nun sisters, though, Teagan had qualified. She wanted to get married someday.

  No way! Jamie agreed. She never wanted to get married.

  We’ll be just like real sisters, Teagan had continued, her voice more serious. Just like if we had the same parents and everything. You can’t break that bond, not matter how far apart you wind up living. It’s for life.

  Jamie’s voice was equally solemn. A sister’s always a sister.

  No matter what.

  Teagan had put a scoop of mud in her right palm and held it up in the air. Jamie, wrinkling her nose, had done the same. Their hands had met with a slap, spattering mud everywhere, raining down brown splotches till they both looked like liver-spotted Dalmatians. But they did their best to withhold their giggles.

  I hereby declare us official Sisters of the Mud!

  Sisters of the Mud! Jamie had echoed.

  It was as far as they had gotten. The ceremony had ended with peals of laughter and, as Teagan recalled, a race to the swimming hole.

  “Hey, Lady?”

  Teagan snapped out her reverie.

  “It’s not like a gang or anything, I swear!” the boy explained quickly. “It’s nothing bad. But my dad, he gets real hyper about stuff like that. I don’t want him to get mad at me, you know?”

  Teagan swallowed. The kid would need a little more sounding out on this one. She would have to talk to his parents, as well. But he could be telling the truth. Not all childhood clubs had gang violence on their agendas.

  Sometimes, a kid just needed something, or someone, to belong to.

  No matter what.

  Chapter Twelve

  Jamie sat stiffly in the passenger seat of Eric’s Civic, wishing he owned a slightly roomier car. They were too close for comfort. He was an attractive specimen, and though the conk on the head might have screwed up her brain for a while, it hadn’t touched her hormones. Flirtation seemed to be her primary method of dealing with men, and given how incredibly off limits Eric was, even the most innocent elements of her repertoire seemed inappropriate. She was determined to watch herself, for all their sakes. But self-restraint was not her forte.

  “So,” she began casually, making another attempt to break the tension. Eric was being friendly enough, but he still spoke as though he were being taxed by the word. She was certain he hadn’t always been so laconic—if he had been, she wouldn’t remember his laughter. “Tell me. Where was I when you first met me?”

  He didn’t answer right away, and Jamie’s jaws clenched. He was doing it again—the awkward pause, the stalling. Could the man never think on his feet? Be spontaneous?

  “I’m not sure how much I should tell you,” he answered at last, his voice thoughtful. “I don’t want things I say to influence your memories—it might mess them up. Why don’t you tell me what you think you remember, and then maybe I can confirm some things?”

  “Fine,” Jamie replied, not bothering to hide her exasperation. The grownup Eric might be good looking, but so far he was proving an unexpected bore. What had she been thinking back then? How had she gone from fry munching, guitar-strumming Jerry to him?

  Jerry. She sat up with a smile.

  Hot damn. It was coming back.

  “We’re in Oakland now,” Eric announced as they drove past Magee Hospital and into the university’s congested main corridor. “I’ll just circle around. You tell me if you want to stop anywhere.”

  Jamie looked out the windows and attempted to concentrate. She couldn’t say what looked familiar, because it all did. If she had been asked to picture the Pitt campus before they left home, she might have struggled, but now it seemed as familiar as the back of her hand. Of course she had been here. She had spent ages here.

  “Anything?” Eric asked, turning off on a side street. Brick row houses, virtually all converted into apartments, rose up on either side.

  “Everything,” she responded. “I’ve seen it all before. But I remember it from on foot. I don’t think I had a car.”

  Eric turned to face her. “Did you ever get a license?”

  Jamie considered. “It seems like I can drive. In fact, I know I can. But I don’t remember getting a license, no.” Her brow furrowed. How could she recall the mechanics of how to drive, but not the learning process? All she could remember was that she had been desperate to get a license from the day she turned sixteen, but back then, no one had been willing to teach her.

  “My plan was to get a car as soon as I started working,” she continued, the facts flowing from her brain as she voiced them. “But I couldn’t afford one. I couldn’t even find one to practice on.”

  “I let you drive mine.”

  Jamie turned her head to look at him. She couldn’t remember that. “You did?”

  He nodded. For a moment she thought he might smile, but then he caught himself. “You told me you had a learner’s permit, but I never saw it. I always suspected you were making it up.”

  Jamie raised an eyebrow. “So why did you let me drive your car?”

  Another grin threatened to escape, but he fought it back. He seemed every bit as determined as she was to play the stoic. But in that moment she realized that his motivation was different from her own. He wasn’t so much worried about the impression he was making on her as he was determined not to enjoy himself in her company. Jamie could admire his husbandly loyalty, but she wasn’t in the habit of spending her time with robotic, humorless men, and she had no desire to start now. Not when she was fairly certain that Eric could be a lot of fun—if he wanted to be. They were both being ridiculous. They just needed to relax.

  “Look, Eric,” she began, careful to keep her tone light, despite the gravity of her words. “I don’t know what I was like when we were together, but I promise you, I have no interest in making any trouble for you and Teagan. You don’t ha
ve to be so careful with me—it’s not like I’m going to throw myself at you. I’m sure I have any number of much better-looking guys already lined up and waiting for my return. So, drop the cold fish thing, okay? I’m dealing with enough tension.”

  She watched his face carefully, unable to predict his reaction. She was hoping he would smile. But his deep, explosive chuckle startled her.

  “What?” she demanded, grinning. “What’s so amusing?”

  “You are,” he answered, his voice lighter. “You haven’t changed a bit, you know that?”

  Her grin faded a little. “No, I don’t know that. I was kind of hoping I had.”

  Eric continued to smile. “I’m not insulting you, Jamie. And I haven’t meant to be rude. But you’re right. Teagan took the news well—I shouldn’t underestimate her.”

  The blood drained from Jamie’s face. Her stomach churned. “What?” she sputtered, disbelieving. “You told her?”

  Eric had the gall to appear surprised. “Of course I told her,” he answered. “I told you I would.”

  “But—” Jamie’s retort curbed itself as her mind skipped ahead. So Teagan knew. She had known when she wrote the note this morning.

  Was she nuts?

  “She knows,” Jamie asked heavily, “and she still asked you to drive me around today?”

  Eric’s smile bordered on smug. “I told you she wouldn’t hold it against you. Teagan is a truly remarkable person.” He paused, and his voice dropped. “That’s why I love her. In case you’re wondering.”

  Jamie was wondering about a lot of things. She knew that Teagan had cared deeply about her once, and she seemed to care still. But one fun summer fourteen years ago was hardly an adequate basis on which to trust another female when it came to a man. Jamie was pretty sure no woman had ever trusted her with a man, and from what she remembered, they had good reason not to. So what kind of game was Teagan playing, throwing her and Eric together like this?