Third Time's the Charm

by Liz Talley

  “We’ll go to the Lazy Frog tomorrow.”

  “Awww,” Katie Clare whined. “Not fair. Landry’s the one who ran over the motorcycle. I didn’t do nothing.”

  “Anything, and this is life, sweetheart. Doesn’t always go as planned,” Henry said, his mind still on the fact his life hadn’t exactly panned out. Well, it had in a lot of ways, but there was still a hole. A hole left from how things had ended with him and Sunny.

  And here she sat next to him.

  He had no way to fix the mistake he’d made long ago, but he sure wished he could. It was like an unfinished painting cropping up every time he examined his life. A section of the happy paint-by-number left a glaring, obvious white.

  But in life some things were left undone, and a person couldn’t go backward to repair the tears. He had to accept he’d messed up and move past it.

  He glanced over at Sunny. She seemed so broken. So not Sunny. And there was nothing he could do about the hurt in her life… or the fact she likely hated him.

  “So how old are you guys?” Sunny asked turning her head to his kids.

  “I’m fifteen,” Landry said.

  “I’m eight and a half,” Katie Clare said. “My birthday’s in October. When’s your birthday?”

  “August eighteenth,” Henry said before he could think about it.

  “You know her birthday?” Katie Clare asked, her little voice squeaking as her pitch went up.

  Henry glanced over at Sunny. “I have a good memory.”

  “No, you don’t.” Landry snorted. “You forget tons of things. Like my birthday.”

  “I didn’t forget your birthday,” Henry said, not wanting to have this conversation again. “I mixed it up with my cousin’s. You two are a day apart.”

  “Whatever.” Landry sighed.

  “Hey, if you want to talk mistakes, we can.” Henry eyed his son in the rearview mirror.

  Landry’s eyes widened. “No, that’s okay.”

  The kid slid back into the seat and popped in his earbuds, but Katie Clare wasn’t going to check out as easily.

  “How come you know her birthday?” Katie’s eyes grew big. “Oh, was she like your girlfriend or something?”

  Sunny turned around. “You ask lots of questions. Are you a reporter? Or a detective?”

  Katie Clare made a face. “I’m just a kid.”

  Sunny chuffed a laugh. And his heart warmed at the sound. It had been so long since he’d heard that laugh, but even it had changed. Somehow her laugh was huskier. Sexier.

  “Actually, Sunny was my girlfriend in high school, Katie,” Henry said, flicking on the blinker and waiting for Fred Odom to tootle by in his mail truck before turning onto Spruce Street where Deeter had a busy garage.

  “She was?” Katie Clare asked, sounding positively titillated.

  Sunny shifted in her seat. “Back when we were young. Your brother’s age.”

  “He doesn’t have a girlfriend, but I saw a picture of him on Instagram with a girl at a party. They were hugging. Mom got mad at him and said he couldn’t go to any more parties. He’s a freshman in high school. She said that’s too young for girls.”

  Katie Clare was a fount of information and Henry made a note to talk to his son about parties, drinking, and girls. He’d tried to pretend his little boy wasn’t a teenager, but the kid had started sprouting body hair and the occasional pimple to remind him that it was beyond time to have a refresher talk regarding sex and other things that could get a young guy in trouble.

  “Do you live here now?” Katie Clare asked Sunny.

  “Sorta. I’m staying with my mom for a while.”

  “Oh,” Katie Clare said, and Henry could hear the wheels turning in his daughter’s head. Ever since Jillian had gotten remarried last year, the child had been playing matchmaker. Katie was determined to see him remarried too. So far she’d written her dance teacher’s email and cell phone on a note card and left it on his kitchen island. Then she circulated him through back-to-school night like it was a dial-a-date function. He’d apologized to five women over his daughter’s insistence they go out to coffee.

  Of course, he’d made a half-hearted resolution this year to start dating more. He had finally reached a point in the business where he could take more time off. He’d been lonely for too long and wanted someone to share his life with.

  So Katie wasn’t too far off… just a bit too pushy.

  “Here we go. Let me run in and talk to Deeter.” Henry shifted into Park.

  “I’ll go with you,” Sunny said, unclicking her seat belt.

  “I can handle it.”

  Sunny’s face darkened. “It’s my bike, Henry.”

  Henry paused for a moment then shrugged. This Sunny took care of herself. And she wasn’t going to give any power over herself to Henry.

  Deeter was happy to see Sunny, and after regaling her with a dozen pictures of Cecily Anne, his new granddaughter, he had the bike unloaded and sent them on their way with a wave and a promise to get to the bike by Monday.

  They climbed back in the truck, and Henry angled the tires toward Grover’s Park. Sunny didn’t seem to be interested in conversation, so he turned on the radio, hoping Miranda Lambert would ease the tension. Instead, the country singer crooned about baggage and done-you-wrongs. No help there. Luckily it took very little time to get anywhere in Morning Glory. As he bumped over the tracks and pulled into the rougher part of Morning Glory, Katie Clare pressed her nose to the window and said, “This is where a bunch of poor people live.”

  Sunny issued a paper-dry chuckle.

  “Katie Clare, that’s not polite,” he said.

  “But it is,” his daughter insisted, pointing at a house with a collapsing patio and rusted truck in the yard.

  “It’s okay, Henry,” Sunny said.

  “It’s not okay.”

  “It’s the truth that only eight-and-a-half-year-olds are brave enough to say. A lot of poor people live in Grover’s Park. That’s a fact.”

  For a moment her words lay there, throbbing, naked and too real to touch.

  “Do you have another way to get around?” he asked.

  “Why? You have a car I can borrow?” Sunny asked as they wove through the cramped streets.

  “No, but I can give you a ride if you need it.”

  “I’ll figure out something,” Sunny said before her body stiffened. “Ah, damn, I have to be somewhere tomorrow morning.” Her shoulders slumped and she issued a heavy sigh.

  “I can pick you up.”

  “No. That’s ridiculous.”

  “It’s no problem. Once Deeter locates the parts and has a time frame for repair, we can get you a rental or something. Just temporary.”

  “I can take care of myself, Henry.”

  “I know you can, but this is my fault. Or rather my son’s. I owe you not being inconvenienced. Surely you can tolerate me long enough for me to get you to wherever you need to go.”

  Sunny shrugged. “Fine. I need to be at the school board office at nine tomorrow morning. Then I have to go to the high school.” Her words didn’t invite any questions. Sunny was a private person, a woman who didn’t want anyone to meddle in her life.

  “I’ll be here at eight forty-five to take you. I’m actually working a job at the high school. New gym.”

  “Great.” But she didn’t say it like it was great. She said it like she dreaded climbing into the truck with him again.

  Henry pulled into the driveway at 223 Park Street and let the truck idle. He wanted to apologize for so much. For his daughter being so blunt. For his son running over her bike. For what he’d done all those years ago. But the words were stuck inside him. If he said all he needed to say, they’d be here for days upon end. “Here we are.”

  “Hey, this is the yard you mow, Dad.” Landry leaned up, peering through the windshield at a patch of yard enclosed in a chain-link fence.

  “Yard you mow?” Sunny repeated, whipping her head toward him. “You mow the yard?�
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  Henry wanted to grab hold of the words his son had released, ball them up, and toss them out the window. He’d forgotten that he’d come by once with Landry to mow and edge the Voorheeses’ yard. “Sometimes I helped Eden out. When it was really hot and I was in the area.”

  “You mow the yard? When are you ever in this area?” Her violet eyes crackled in anger.

  Her questions were bullets he wanted to dodge. He helped Eden and Betty out with the yard and things that needed repair because they were a link to Sunny… and because he still carried around guilt. But he didn’t want to say that aloud. So he said nothing.

  His failure to respond seemed to piss Sunny off more. She grabbed the bags at her feet and hopped down to the uneven pavement. Not even bothering to issue a goodbye, she slammed the door and stomped toward the sagging front porch of the small house she’d grown up in. Her jeans were baggy, the heels of her boots scuffed, and in that moment, Henry’s heart squeezed so hard in his chest dampness crept into his eyes.

  “She sure is mad about her motorcycle, huh?” Katie Clare said.

  “Yeah, she is,” Henry said, shifting the truck into Reverse.

  “I didn’t even know girls rode motorcycles.”

  Sunny dipped the brush into the pan, swishing the bristles against the edge before swiping a final coat of paint on the upper cabinets in her mother’s kitchen. The semigloss gray was a perfect neutral, and with new hardware, the kitchen would look somewhat modernized. Amazing what a little paint could do.

  Her blood pressure had finally normalized, though for a good hour after Henry pulled out of her driveway, she’d thought she’d blow a gasket.

  Charity.

  That’s what people had always given the Voorhees. And Henry continued the practice by being the benevolent landowner. Okay, so the Delmars no longer owned the Voorheeses’ house, but Delmars had at one point. The same way they’d owned most of the rental properties in Grover’s Park. The Delmar family dabbled in real estate development, land management, and construction. In other words, they ate the whole enchilada.

  It irked her that Henry had felt so sorry for Eden and her mama that he’d stooped to help the poor. Probably trying to win the citizen-of-the-year award or something. Hey, I mow the yard for my old girlfriend’s crack-whore mama and pitiful sister. Look at me. I’m Sandra effing Dee. Give me your shitty Man of the Year award so I can put it on the shelf beside my daddy’s.

  Bunch of effing hypocrites with their scholarships and declarations of community renewal. We help people get on their feet, but don’t think for one second you’ll end up with our boy Henry. He’s not marrying Grover’s Park trash no matter how pretty or smart she is.

  Anger made her hands shake and she dropped the paintbrush.

  “Motherfu—”

  “You sound like me in there,” her mother called out in a singsong voice. She almost sounded cheerful. Which was alarming for Betty. She’d never done cheerful very well. Usually if she was happy, she was coked up or something.

  “Apple doesn’t fall far, right?” Sunny called back.

  “What’s wrong with you anyway?”

  “Nothing.” Sunny clenched her jaw and tried to forget Henry had taken pity on them… once again.

  “Was that Henry’s truck I saw pull out of the drive?”

  Sneaky woman. Sunny had thought her mother had been asleep in front of the TV when she returned. Obviously not.

  “His kid ran over the Harley,” Sunny said, picking up the brush and using the paint thinner she’d purchased to wipe up the swoop of paint on the new tile.

  “What? I can’t hear ya.”

  Sunny set the brush in the pan and went into the living room. “I said his kid backed over the bike. Crushed it. Henry took it to Deeter. Then gave me a ride home. When will the van be ready?”

  “Dunno. You’re the one who took it in to be serviced.” Her mother slid her gaze over to Sunny. “That must have been an interesting trip home.”

  “It was a ride. That’s it.”

  “Yeah, but that boy’s been pining after you forever.”

  “Don’t, Mother.” Sunny issued a warning. Henry Todd Delmar had not been pining over her. He’d married the girl his parents had chosen for him despite what he’d professed to have wanted, and he’d stayed married to her for many years. Close to ten years. Henry had moved on and so had Sunny. They were a closed book and every other euphemism she could scrape up to indicate nothing could happen between her and Henry.

  Ever again. Because she wouldn’t let it.

  “I’m just saying. He’s got plenty of money and he ain’t bad to look at,” Betty said, her smile making her leer like a scary clown. Her mother persisted in wearing bright pink lipstick and coloring her hair platinum, a sad attempt to cling to what she’d once been—a fantasy pinup girl.

  “You do remember what he did, right? He knocked a girl up while we were together.” Saying those words ripped her heart like they always had. She was over Henry, but the betrayal, the loss of all she’d thought would be hers, still tore at her. Like an old injury flaring before an advancing storm.

  “Technically you were broken up, remember? Besides, he’s a guy. When a girl shoves it in his face, he does what a man does. He takes it.”

  “Are you serious?” Sunny said, feeling disbelief wash over her. Back when the news hit, her mother had been incensed at Henry. She’d stood by Sunny, shaking her fist, cursing men, bemoaning the loss of a rich son-in-law. And now it was just “boys will be boys”?

  “I’m realistic. You broke up with him. He was a college frat boy at a party where there were drugs, booze, and conniving debutantes wagging their asses. You can’t really blame Henry for picking up what bitches were dropping down.”

  “Yeah, I can. I absolutely can.”

  “See? That’s the trouble with women like you.” Her mother scoffed. “You don’t understand men. You thought Henry would stay in his room studying, pining away for his sweet Sunny girl. No. Guys are hunters by nature. They’re always looking for a place to put their peckers. You can take a priest, get him drunk, get him high, shove your tits in his face, and he’d have you facedown, going to town before you could say—”

  “No, you’re wrong. You can’t take your strip-club philosophies about men and apply them to the real world. There are men who don’t go to strip clubs, Mother. There are men who don’t think with their penises. There are men who are loyal and true.”

  “Ha.” Betty snorted, waving her good hand. “You can believe what you wish, but Henry was a nineteen-year-old boy gulping down bourbon and looking for tail. That’s what they all do, so don’t deceive yourself. You think Alan didn’t step out on you while he was deployed? He was gone for six months at a time. Come on, Sunny. Don’t be stupid.”

  “You are such a bad person,” Sunny said, swallowing the acid that had crept up her throat. “I don’t know if Alan slept with someone else while we were married. I can’t ask him, can I?”

  “Nope, but you can own the fact you split up with both of them men. You might as well have handwritten them a pass to get some ass.”

  “I don’t want to have this conversation with you. Your track record for romance is nonexistent.” For the second time that day, Sunny felt tears prick at her eyes. What was wrong with her? She hadn’t cried the entire time Alan was missing in action. She hadn’t cried when Alan’s commanding officer came to her door to give her the news his body had been recovered, and she damn sure hadn’t cried at his funeral in front of all those other military wives watching for the slightest crack so they could swoop in with tissues and casseroles.

  “Who said anything about romance?” Betty said, picking up the controller and changing the channel. “Henry’s got money and security. You could do much worse. In fact, you have. If you’d have gotten knocked up by Henry instead of that other gal doing it, we wouldn’t be sitting here having this conversation.”

  “You are truly horrible,” Sunny whispered.

 
“So you already said. But that don’t make me wrong.” Betty cranked up the volume and dismissed her eldest daughter with Judge Judy.

  Sunny closed her eyes, said a small prayer to forgotten God, and then walked to her bedroom. Sinking onto the bed, she marveled at her mother. At the thoughts the woman had just unloosed. No wonder Sunny had grown so cynical. Outside of the sadness of her life, she now lived with the Queen of Mean. People just didn’t get it. They saw Betty and felt pity for her. What they didn’t understand was the abject misery the woman splashed on the people around her. Sunny knew she should feel bad for seeing her mother as such a burden, but being eternally in her presence wore on her. So the idea of taking the temporary job at the high school appealed to her on more than just a financial level. She wouldn’t make much money, but the time away from her mother might save her sanity.

  After she went to the school board office tomorrow, she needed to call home health services to make sure Vienna could cover the hours Sunny would miss while working. Someone had to deal with her mother. But not now.

  Tomorrow.

  The day she would see Henry again.

  Henry Todd Delmar.

  He’d changed, but not by much. He was still loose-limbed, his hair curling behind his ears. A man now, for sure. His shoulders had broadened and his body thickened. The little squinty lines around his eyes made him look wiser, and the scruff on his jaw was thicker. He still made her heart stop, not that she would ever admit it except when sprawled in her childhood room, a place where she’d dreamed of kissing him, of going all the way with him, of having his babies. Only here could she even begin to acknowledge that what she’d felt for Henry had been locked away and never dealt with. Once upon a time, she had loved him as desperately as a girl who had nothing much in her life could.

  And she’d had not much good in her life growing up. Henry had appeared on the horizon, bright and shiny in his armor, with his soft smile, big heart, and gorgeous hands that held hers as he told her he’d change everything for her. Of course, she wasn’t absolutely pathetic. Her mother might have been embarrassing as hell, but her little sister was a bit of a local talent—Eden could dance and croon like a ’40s jazz singer. Her aunt Ruby Jean had made sure they had school clothes, a bit of churching, and good manners. Her brother had been a scoundrel but always willing to help a neighbor repair a fence. Of course, her brother had died in an accident on an oil rig in the Gulf, but he’d been a good thing in her life. And Sunny’s life up until the day Henry had destroyed her had been better than most could imagine for a girl who’d grown up in Grover’s Park. She’d been the valedictorian, prom queen, and head cheerleader. Ole Miss had pretty much given her a free ride for college. Not everything was good because of Henry… but much of it had been because of him. Because he’d loved her, found her worthy and vowed to spend his life making her happy.