Adding Up to Marriage

by Karen Templeton

  And God help her, she means it, Jewel thought, something like rage boiling up from her gut. Because she looked into her mother’s glittering, lovestruck eyes and saw the same delusional soul behind them that had made Jewel’s childhood about as stable as a skateboard on ice. Granted, when this marriage crashed and burned like all the others at least it wouldn’t affect Jewel, except it would because she’d be the one left to pick up the pieces of her mother’s shattered heart. Again.

  “And what on earth makes you think this time will work when it never has before?” she said, slamming shut her book and cramming it back into her backpack.

  “Jewel! Why would you say that? Everybody needs hope, sugar—”

  “No, what you need is some grip on reality! Taking a leap of faith is one thing, but you’d think by now you’d at least open your eyes before you jump!”

  Instead of getting mad—which even Jewel admitted her mother had every right to do, she was truly talking smack to the woman—Kathryn pouted. “You don’t think I know what I’m doing?” she asked in a small voice.

  “No, Mama. I don’t.” And Jewel realized, in this respect at least, she had a leg up on her mother. That she did know enough to open her eyes, to not take a leap without having at least some idea where, and how, to land.

  Meaning, no—she couldn’t move forward with Silas, no matter how besotted she was with him. How much thinking about him made her all warm and tingly inside. Because it wasn’t fair to him, or to his boys, to be saddled with some clueless little twit who still had no idea how to make a relationship work.

  Shaking, she got to her feet only to have her mother grab her wrist.

  “I want your blessing, baby,” Kathryn said, pleading, her nails biting into Jewel’s skin.

  “You don’t need it, Mama. What you need…oh, never mind,” she muttered, turning, only to wheel back, her brain finally releasing the question her mother’s surprise announcement had temporarily obliterated. “How did you find me here, anyway?”

  Kathryn lowered her eyes to her purse to pull out a couple of dollars for her coffee. “Does it matter?”

  “Yeah. Because it’s creepy, the way you keep popping up. My car’s not out front, you had no way of knowing I was in here…oh, hell,” Jewel said, her stomach turning inside out. “You had a tracking application installed on the phone you gave me, didn’t you? Because that’s how Keith found Aaron, through some GPS thing on his phone—”

  “Keith? Aaron? What are you talking about—”

  “For heaven’s sake, Mama!” Her face on fire, Jewel fumbled to get her phone out of her purse. “I’m not some wayward teenager you need to keep tabs on!”

  “What else was I supposed to do?” her mother whined. “I have to know where you are in case I need you!”

  Jewel stared into her mother’s genuinely terrified eyes for several seconds before taking her hand and pressing the phone into it. “You have Monty now, you don’t need me,” she said, then turned and walked away before her mother could see her tears.

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to be this late.” Obviously frazzled, Jewel brushed past Silas on her way into the kitchen. “I had to run into Santa Fe to get a new phone. The boys aren’t here?”

  “At my folks’. Mom said she needed a grandbaby fix before she lost her mind. What happened to your old phone?”

  He watched as she shucked her backpack onto the kitchen table, shoving her sweater sleeves up to her elbows. “Mama’s getting married again,” she said, grabbing a bowl of cookie dough she’d made the day before out of the fridge.

  “And…there’s a correlation between those two things?”

  “Yes.”

  Thinking, To hell with this, Silas walked over and gently grasped her shoulders, turning her around. “Hey,” he said softly. “Spill.”

  Conflict screamed in her eyes before, shaking her head, she pulled away. Her back to him, she clanged cookie sheets onto the counter, washed her hands, then began plucking chunks of dough out of the bowl and jerkily rolling them into balls. Then she stopped, gripping the edges of the counter, her shoulders up near her ears.

  “Turns out she put this tracking thing on my phone, that’s how she always knew where to find me. So she did, at Ortega’s. Came in, announced her engagement to some man she found on the Internet, who she’s known for God only knows how long—or not—who I’ve never even met. Oh, and she’ll be his fifth wife.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Yeah.” She smacked the first glob of dough onto the sheet, smashing it down with the bottom of a glass like she was killing a bug. And oh, did Silas know where this was headed.

  “Honey—”

  “Don’t, Si,” she whispered. “Please.”

  Like hell. Again, he curled his hands around her arms, angled her to face him. “You’re not your mother, Jewel—”

  “She asked for my blessing, Silas! My approval for something…” Her mouth thinned, she once more put space between them. “I know I’m not my mother. Which is precisely why I refuse to follow in her footsteps.”

  Yeah, no surprise there. Then why did he feel like he’d just been eviscerated? “I know you need time—”

  “And what’s going to change a month from now?” she said, wheeling on him, her expression anguished. “A year? Ten years? I see that hope in her eyes, that…that belief she clings to so fiercely that this time won’t be like the others. No, don’t interrupt, I’ve got to say this.”

  Her breathing ragged, she knuckled the space between her brows, getting cookie dough all over her glasses. On a strangled groan, she yanked them off and tossed them on the counter, where they skittered away like a scolded puppy. “I look in her eyes,” she said in a small voice, tears flooding hers, “and I see…oh, hell.”

  Glancing at the ceiling, she let out a humorless chuckle, then faced him again. “I see exactly how loving you makes me feel,” she said, and Silas’s heart stopped. “Amazed, and awestruck, and most of all, hopeful. Except, how on earth can I trust any of that? How…” She swallowed, then swiped away a tear. “How can I trust what I see in your eyes?”

  And here’s where being good at something besides numbers might’ve come in handy, because when far too many seconds passed without Silas answering, Jewel gave another unhappy snort and returned to her chore. “Yeah. That’s what I thought.”

  Helplessness trampled Silas like a bull elephant—a sensation he’d hoped never in his life to feel again. Just like with Amy, he had no earthly idea how to give her what she needed. In Jewel’s case, how to staunch the loneliness she’d clearly determined would be her companion to the grave.

  “You love me?”

  “Yeah,” she said, obviously confused. Even more obviously in agony. “Go figure.”

  Funny, how he couldn’t remember Amy ever saying she loved him, although she must have at some point. Early on, though. Before things got hard. Before she realized that loving was hard, sometimes. Jewel, though…she already understood that. What she didn’t understand yet was that hard didn’t mean impossible.

  But only if both people were willing to work at it. Like his parents did, every day of their lives.

  “I’d never hurt you, Jewel. You’ve got to believe that.”

  Several beats ticked by before she turned again, tears bulging over her lower lashes. “And God knows I want to believe you. Want to trust what I feel. It’s like you opened the door for me, and ohmigosh do I like what I see on the other side, but…”

  Two tears broke free to streak down her face. “I’m so sorry, Silas,” she whispered. “My problem to work out, sure, but ‘maybe’ isn’t fair to you, or the boys.”

  His own eyes burning, Silas closed the space between them and drew her close, inhaling her scent, brown sugar and vanilla and flowers-in-a-bottle, and for maybe a half minute he held on tight, wishing desperately for a few magic words that would make her change her mind. But what could he say? That he needed her?

  As if she’d heard him she jerked away, snatching h
er glasses off the counter.

  “Honey…I’m more than willing to take a chance on this—”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not. I can’t.” She shoved her glasses back on, her hair falling in slippery little furrows around her face. “If you don’t mind, I think…I’ll just finish up these cookies for you and then…take my stuff back to Eli’s.”

  He could barely breathe. “If that’s what you want—”

  “Although if it’s okay with you…I think I’ll leave the Beanie Babies for the boys?”

  “Oh, uh, sure. But…won’t you miss them?”

  She almost smiled. “No. Oh! But do you need me to make dinner—?”

  “Got it covered,” Silas said, even though he didn’t. “Well. I guess I’ll go get the boys out of Mom’s hair.” He cleared his throat. “Will you be here when we get back?”

  “It’ll take me twenty minutes, tops, to toss everything in my car,” she said, her back to him as she slid first one, then the other sheet into the oven. “So, no.”

  With that, Silas was out of words. Or reasons to linger. So he whistled to Doughboy, who’d slept through the whole exchange, and went out to his car, heaving the beast onto the passenger seat and distractedly taking a Handi Wipe to his drool.

  “Why am I so lousy at this?” he asked the dog, who gave him a messy schlurp across his chin. Banishing the dog spit with his sleeve, Silas sighed. “I’m really, really gonna miss her, boy.”

  With a cross between a whine and a groan, Doughboy plopped his head on Silas’s knee and rolled his big, brown bloodshot eyes up at him, the picture of commiseration.

  The horn honk nearly made Jewel drop the twenty-pound pumpkin she’d just lugged to the other side of Eli’s porch. Shielding her eyes from the October sun’s last blast of the day, she turned to see, past the For Sale sign at the end of the drive, Noah waving at her from inside that Bad Bart truck of his.

  Since she’d left Silas’s two weeks before she hadn’t run into any of the brothers, despite the house being right next to the family’s shop. Seeing Noah now stirred up the heartache all over again. Heartache of her own making, granted, but still. Cutting off something to avoid pain down the road didn’t mean it wasn’t still going to hurt like holy heck now.

  Jewel waved back, fully expecting Noah to drive on. When he didn’t, she reluctantly made her way down the porch steps and out to his truck, clutching her jacket closed against the wind.

  “Hey,” she said to his sassy grin. Dude was definitely cute, no doubt about it. Even though her hormones were all, Meh, can’t be bothered.

  “Hey,” he said, the breeze messing with his light brown hair through the open window. “Whatcha been up to?”

  Jewel shrugged. “Nothin’ much. Packing. Studying. Measuring pregnant bellies. The usual. You?”

  He nodded toward the sign. With the big old Sold sticker slapped across it. “You find a place yet?”

  “Sorta. The Blacks are going to Ireland for the month. Winnie asked me to dog/chicken/house sit. Buys me a little more time to decide what comes next.”

  “You’re staying in Tierra Rosa, though, right?”

  Jewel forced a smile. “We’ll see.”

  Noah looked away, tapping the steering wheel with his thumb. “You gonna ask me about my brother?”

  “Sure thing. How’s Eli getting on?” His gaze swung to hers and she sighed. “It’s a small town, Noah. If anything was going on with Silas or the boys, I’m sure I’d find out.” Her eyes narrowed. “Or did he send you to spy on me?”

  “You kidding? He’d have kittens if he knew I was here.”

  Jewel shoved her hands in her pockets. “Then why are you here?”

  “I can’t swing by to see how you’re doing?”

  Out of nowhere, the loneliness swamped her. That she’d lose her mind if she spent one more night with nothing to keep her company but her textbooks and her packing boxes and reruns of The Gilmore Girls.

  “You got plans for tonight?” she asked.

  “Nnnnno,” Noah said, suspicion flashing in his eyes. “Why?”

  “Hold on,” she said, then ran back into the house, grabbed her purse and streaked back out before she could change her mind. The look on Noah’s face when she yanked open the passenger door and climbed in was priceless.

  “While you’re swinging,” she said, “how about swinging me out to dinner?”

  “You sure that’s a good idea?”

  “Since I’m starving I think it’s an excellent idea.”

  Noah seemed to ponder this for several seconds before giving the car some gas and steering one-handed away from the curb. “Where’d you like to go?”

  “How about the Lone Star? I’ve never been.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  “I know, huh? I’ve been here almost two years, too.”

  “No, I mean…” He chuckled. “I don’t generally connect the Lone Star and ‘dinner’ in my head, that’s all. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, exactly, but…people don’t go there for the food. I mean, really, I can spring for dinner someplace where the food isn’t served on greasy paper in a plastic basket.”

  “I’m not asking you to spring for anything. I just…I just want company tonight, okay?”

  Beside her, Noah stilled. “You might want to define that.”

  Jewel started to laugh, only to realize exactly how close she was to crying. Shoot. “All I’m asking for is somebody to talk to while I eat my greasy burger and fries.” She looked over. “You good with that?”

  “What I am, is relieved as hell. Well, okay, then—you got your heart set on the Lone Star, far be it from me to deny you. But you’ve been warned.”

  It took barely five minutes, if that, to get to the bar, situated in what used to be an old house not far from the center of town. It was what it was—kitschy and seedy and rundown—and she loved it from the moment the blinking neon glow embraced the truck as they pulled into the rutted parking lot.

  Inside was even better, smelling like grease and booze and every hairstyling product known to humankind, and the space seemed to pulse with indistinguishable country music and people all trying to talk over it, and at least a dozen people called out their “Heys” to Noah—and more than one woman, Jewel noticed, gave her a “Who the heck are you?” once-over that she found strangely gratifying, and she thought, Yes, perfect.

  “Bar or table?” Noah shouted in her ear, close enough that, at one time, she might have gotten all tingly. Yeah, well.

  “Bar,” she shouted back, since the only available tables appeared to require night vision goggles if you had half a hope of seeing the person you were with.

  Somehow, Noah found them two stools. Jewel planted herself on one, then folded her hands tightly in front of her and ordered a Coke. Beside her, Noah chuckled as his phone buzzed. “Hate to break it to you,” he said, checking it and texting a short message before pocketing it again, “but people don’t come here for the ambiance, either. And I’ll have whatever’s on tap, Ramon,” he said to the paunchy, steel-haired bartender. “And wouldja add a couple of burgers and fries to that?”

  “Sure thing, Noah—”

  “Trust me,” Jewel shouted over an eruption of laughter behind them, “you don’t want me getting drunk.”

  Noah’s brow puckered as the bartender called out their orders to the cook in back. “No?”

  She shook her head, smiling for Ramon when he set her Coke in front of her, then handed Noah his draft. “No. I sing, I cry, I throw up. Not necessarily in that order. What I do not do, is have fun. Nor does anybody who’s with me.”

  “Then why are you here?” Noah took a swig of his beer. “Since it’s pretty obvious you don’t really want to be here with me.”

  Jewel sipped her Coke, wishing Noah would quit staring at her like he was trying to dissect her brain. She swung all the way around on her seat, surveying the jovial scene in front of her, forced though it may have been for many of the revelers. “Don’t be silly, I ca
n’t think of a single person I’d rather be here with.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Without moving her head, she cut her eyes to his. Like she couldn’t see that smile behind the rim of his glass. She jerked her gaze away again, seriously reconsidering the not-getting-drunk thing. But only for a moment, since she knew that way lay idiocy.

  “So why are you here?” she said. “With me, I mean?”

  “Because shoving you out of my truck would’ve been awkward?”

  She glanced over. “Any more awkward than going out with a girl your brother’s—”

  At Noah’s arched brow, Jewel blushed and once more looked elsewhere.

  Noah shifted to lean one elbow on the bar, his head propped in his hand. “You’re right, there are some boundaries even I don’t cross. Although, just to be clear—Silas hasn’t said word one to me about what did or didn’t go on between you. Not that it’s not patently obvious something did—and if you ask me, still is—but Si’s real good about keeping his private life private.” His mouth pulled into a rueful grin. “As much as anybody can in this town. In this family.”

  Reaching across himself to grab his beer, Noah frowned at the glass for a moment before returning his gaze to hers. “So maybe all I’m doing is taking advantage of an opportunity—” he lifted the glass to his mouth, watching her as he swallowed “—to figure out for myself what was up with that ditzy act of yours.”

  Now she really wished she’d ordered something with more of a kick to it. “Ask Silas. We went all over that.”

  “So you admit it was an act?” When she nodded, Noah said, “Huh,” then tilted the glass in her direction. “You almost had me fooled, I’ll give you that. Si, too. Although that’s not surprising, considering that what he knows about women you could put on the back of a matchbook.”

  “As opposed to you.”

  “That’s right. Not that I pretend to understand why y’all do half the things you do, but at least I’ve gotten pretty good at pegging the good-time gals from the ones determined to get a ring on their finger.”