Right Brother

by Patricia McLinn

  She felt as if she were standing on the edge of something. The way she used to feel at the swimming hole as a kid. Standing on the dive-rock, poised to slice through the air, then into the cool water, shadowed by surrounding trees. Down into its dark mysteries. Finally, pulling the water to start the ascent, kicking toward the growing light, kicking hard, that last time as she broke the surface, head back, face to the sky.

  Somewhere in the distance, a screen door clanked closed, and a woman’s voice called for Gary to hurry or they’d be late. A child’s voice responded with “Okay, Mom,” sounding totally unhurried.

  Jennifer sipped from her glass, her gaze falling on the evening purse she’d brought out with her. Only because she hadn’t emptied it last night, so it still held her cell phone.

  Along with other things.

  She recrossed her legs and tugged the edge of her robe into place.

  She wasn’t going to dive into anything. Not anything as familiar as the old swimming hole and definitely not anything as unfamiliar as…well, unfamiliar.

  Oh, but it was nice when he’d smiled at her. And the way his eyes looked in that second before he’d kissed her…and in the seconds after.

  He’d insisted on walking her to the door and waiting while she checked that all was right inside. She’d wondered if he would kiss her then.

  He hadn’t. He’d taken both her hands in his, looking down at them, then simply said good-night and smiled at her again.

  Her cell phone rang. The ordinary sound jolting through Jennifer like an alarm.

  It was Jill, Courtney’s mother. Calling two hours before the scheduled time to pick up Ashley.

  “What’s wro—?”

  Before she could finish the universal maternal concern, Jill said, “Ashley’s fine. I wanted to talk to you before you pick her up, though.”

  “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “Let’s meet at the café? My husband will stay with the girls. They’re all sound asleep now.”

  Jennifer was there waiting when Jill slid into the seat opposite her in the back booth with the wan smile of an adult who’d hosted a sleepover.

  “Coffee,” she said with deep gratitude when she saw that a steaming cup awaited her. “I’ve already had two cups and I still feel half-dead.”

  Jennifer barely curbed her impatience while the woman took a sip.

  “I’m sorry to be mysterious about this, Jennifer, but I wanted to talk to you out of Ashley’s hearing. She slipped out of the house last night—well, really this morning. About two.”

  “Slipped out,” Jennifer repeated.

  “To meet a boy. Nothing happened.” The other woman ran the words together as if they were one. She reached across and put her hand over Jennifer’s. “Nothing happened,” she repeated. “As far as Ron and I could tell, nobody was ever even there. I heard the girls sounding more and more excited, but trying to be more quiet than usual—you know what I mean?”

  Jennifer nodded numbly.

  “It was the quiet that really alerted me—all the shushing each other. I went to the family room, and they were all glued to the windows, trying to see out. A quick head count, and I grabbed Ron out of bed and we went outside. She was out by the street. She said she was waiting for a boy named Jonas. Do you know him?”

  Oh, God. Not just a boy, but a nearly sixteen-year-old boy. “He works part-time at the dealership.”

  Jill made a face. “I should have remembered that. Well, as I said, we never saw him, and Ron looked around pretty thoroughly. Ashley just blurted out his name when Ron demanded—in that ‘I am the father’ bass that always gets to Courtney—to know what she was doing outside.

  “As for the girls, I gave them all a stern talking-to, locked the outside door and kept the key.”

  “I’m so sorry, Jill. I’m so terribly sorry.”

  Jill shook her head. “Ashley went out, but they all participated. Looking back, I knew they were egging someone on to something, I just didn’t know what. So I hold them all responsible—and I told them that.”

  Jennifer didn’t doubt the other woman’s sincerity. But that didn’t change that Ashley had been the only one to leave the house and go to meet a boy—a much older boy.

  “We were just going to talk.” Ashley drew her leg up on the couch after Jennifer ordered her to sit. “They made a big drama of it. It was no big deal.”

  A ping of acid-sharp panic plucked against Jennifer’s ribs at Ashley’s defiance.

  “It is a big deal,” she said. “To start, you left without permission.”

  “They never said—”

  “Ashley Elizabeth Stenner. It doesn’t matter what they said or didn’t. You know you are not to do that. Do not tell me you didn’t.”

  Her daughter’s mulish expression didn’t change, but she held her tongue.

  “You know you would never have received permission, so you sneaked out. In the middle of the night. I can’t begin to tell you how disappointed I am in you. When did Jonas arrange this meeting with you?”

  For the first time, Ashley’s expression softened, looking vulnerable.

  “I, uh, told him about the sleepover. And he said that was, you know, cool. He was interested, really interested. And I said I could get outside if I wanted to, if he wanted to talk or something.”

  The ton of worry that had clamped down on Jennifer’s heart lightened by a bare ounce. Maybe…maybe this wasn’t what she’d feared. Maybe…

  “And what did Jonas say?”

  “He laughed. Not at me,” Ashley added, instantly defensive. “Laughed like it was cool. So I knew he wanted me to get out. So we could talk.”

  “Ashley—”

  “You don’t understand!”

  Ashley’s face crumpled, making her look so much like she had as a baby that Jennifer’s breath caught in her throat. Her daughter. Her baby.

  At some level Ashley recognized that this boy, this object of her first crush, wasn’t really interested in her. And it hurt. It hurt her so much that she wouldn’t—maybe she couldn’t—see it. But Jennifer was certain her daughter had no grasp of another aspect of this crush. A crush on an unattainable football player who couldn’t be bothered with her—just like her father.

  “He talks to me,” Ashley wailed. “To me! He’s going to be the star of the high school football team, but he likes to talk to me.”

  “Ashley,” Jennifer said gently, “Jonas is in high school. He’s—”

  “You’re horrible! You go off with him, you’re always off with him. He’s more important to you now. But you won’t let me have anybody!”

  It took Jennifer a second to untangle the pronouns. “This has nothing to do with Trent. Or me. It’s—”

  “I hate him! He’s more important to you than I am, more important than anybody.”

  “That’s not true!”

  “God, you just don’t want me to be popular!” Ashley exclaimed in another of her abrupt turns. “You think you’re the only one who can be popular in this family. But I can be. I will be. Just you wait. I will be. Because Jonas likes me. He doesn’t think I’m some stupid kid, and he’s the star! The team’s best player! Everyone says so. I won’t let you stand in my way. I won’t!” Her wail desolved into sobs and she stormed off.

  He doesn’t think I’m some stupid kid, and he’s the star! The team’s best player! Everyone says so.

  And if only she could stand within the glow of his star, everyone would think Ashley Stenner was okay.

  The slam of her daughter’s bedroom door reverberated through Jennifer’s bones with the truth she had feared for months.

  Ashley Stenner was becoming Jennifer Truesdale.

  Ashley was on the same path to making the same mistakes that she had. Her own teen years might serve as a cautionary tale…if Ashley were old enough and wise enough to recognize that. But if she were, then they wouldn’t be in this situation.

  What mattered now was making sure that her daughter saw her making good dec
isions, being a good businesswoman, making her own way. Ashley needed to look up to her so she would follow Jennifer’s current path, not her past one.

  Jennifer went to her room, took the key to the Barrett house from the evening bag and put it in the change section of her wallet. She would return it to Darcie the next time she saw her.

  Jennifer stepped into Trent’s office almost as soon as he arrived Monday morning. He knew that wasn’t a good sign.

  “Trent—”

  “I thought we could go to a movie next weekend.”

  “Trent—”

  “I know it means an expedition to get to a theater. But I’ve got a craving to be overcharged for popcorn, have a hard time hearing the dialogue over the audience and step in goo that makes my shoes stick to the floor. Can’t go this weekend because of the Reopening. But next weekend is the last one before practice starts, so that works. You pick the movie—though a big screen is wasted without a car crash, explosion or battle.”

  She sucked in a breath, and he knew the answer wasn’t simply no. It was never.

  “Trent, I’m sorry if you misunderstood—” she shook her head at herself “—if I misled you Saturday. After telling you it was not a date, I sent mixed signals, and I apologize for that. It was wrong.”

  He’d expected backtracking. It’s why he’d hit her so fast with the idea of another date—and Saturday had been a date, damn it—so he would have time to work on her, get her over the hurdle of going on what they both would acknowledge as a date. But this, this was something else.

  “What happened?”

  Her head snapped up. So much swirled around in the drowning blue of her eyes that he felt it like a punch.

  “Nothing happened.”

  “Has anybody ever told you you’re a rotten liar, Jen?”

  She turned away.

  “I’m sorry, Trent. Truly. You have every right to be angry after Saturday. But it would be an untenable situation to have any relationship other than business colleagues under the circumstances. The circumstances here at the dealership, I mean. Because we’re coworkers. Business associates. And that’s all we can be.”

  She’d overdone it. All that emphasis on the dealership and business. It was a misdirection play. And he wasn’t falling for it.

  “Ashley,” he said.

  She spun around to him. “What? No. I told you—”

  “I know what you told me. And I know the bits and pieces I heard at the café.”

  “Oh, God.” She pressed her fingertips to her temples. “I should have known. In this town, I should have known.”

  “Something about sneaking out. She was at a sleepover, right?”

  Her sigh seemed to come from the core of the planet. “Yes. But… Oh, God. I might as well tell you, before you come to even worse conclusions.”

  He’d had people confide in him before, but didn’t remember any who had been less happy about it. At the end of her tale, with her working so hard to not cry that it would have been easier on both of them if she’d just gone ahead and let the tears fall, he waited to be sure—sure she wouldn’t say anything more and sure she wasn’t going to give them both a break and go ahead and cry.

  Then he spoke. “I’ll fire him today.”

  Her head jerked up. He was glad to see the tears receding under the effect of her surprise. “No, I told you, I really don’t think it’s his fault.”

  Trent couldn’t pin down the itch in him that wanted not only to fire the cocky kid, but to pop him one. He reined it in with reluctance as he recognized Jennifer wasn’t going to let him scratch that itch.

  “Then what do you want me to do?”

  More surprise washed across her eyes. “Nothing. This has nothing to do with you. I told you only because you’d already heard pieces of it and… And….” She shook her head. “I seem to always tell you more than I intend.”

  He stared unfocused through the window into the showroom. “If you really think this is just a case of a girl’s first crush, what’s worrying you so much?”

  Her response took so long in coming that he started to think she wasn’t going to answer.

  “You said that sometimes when parents get a child who’s different from the kind they expected or wanted, that they can have trouble understanding or connecting with that child.”

  “Yeah.” He remembered that conversation. Standing in the open service bay door while the storm brewed. That’s awful, she’d said. He should have known she was thinking about her daughter.

  “I worry that I put my expectations between me and Ashley. That—”

  “That you’re human?”

  She frowned.

  “You worry that you’re human,” he explained. “Because every human being puts expectations on everybody else.”

  After a pause, she gave a single nod. “Okay. But with Ashley—”

  “She’s a kid. Worse, she’s the not-yet-beautiful daughter of a beautiful mother.”

  Heat shimmered between them for a second, burning the oxygen in his lungs, singeing in the blood pooling fast in his groin.

  He looked away. Had to. Self-preservation kicked in at the last second. And finally, a lick of sense reported for duty.

  He cleared his throat. His toes curled in his shoes as if they were holding on to a cliff edge. She looked slightly dazed. Unfocused. He knew what it would take to snap her out of this trance. One word.

  “Ashley—” yup, that did it “—is dealing with all that. Give the kid a break. More important, give yourself a break. Wanting the best for her isn’t the same as not accepting her for who she is. You’re a great mother, Jen.”

  She tried to smile. His imagination thought it had faint tendrils of steam still attached to it.

  He continued. “I understand if you’re worried what people will think of you as a mother, but you can’t really believe—”

  “No.” The word was fierce. “I’m not worried what kind of mother people think I am. I’m worried what kind of mother I am.”

  Chapter Eleven

  In four and a half hours, at 10:00 a.m., the doors of Stenner Autos would officially reopen for business. Jennifer thought she might be sick.

  She hadn’t been able to sleep. She left Ashley a note and came to check her list one more time.

  She’d forgotten something. She was sure she’d forgotten something. But every item on her list was checked off. So what…?

  Trent strode into her office.

  That was it. The alarm system. She’d failed to turn the alarm system back on after she came in.

  Without a word, he took the legal pad with her checklist out of her hand and replaced it with a cup of coffee.

  “Decaf with lots of milk,” he said. “The last thing you need is caffeine or acid. Now, relax. It’s going to be fine.”

  She meant to ask him what he was doing here, making it sound as if she weren’t glad to see him. What came out was, “How do you know it’s going to be okay?”

  “I know because we have one of the smartest women I know running Stenner Autos.”

  She stared at him blankly.

  He leaned forward from his seat on the corner of her desk. “That’s you, Jen. I’m talking about you.”

  “Oh. Thank you.”

  “Hey, that was a compliment.”

  “I know. I said thank-you. I’ve been thinking about the display of used cars. If we—”

  “No. Not until you tell me why you flinched.”

  “I didn’t flinch.”

  “The hell you didn’t. I say you’re smart and you look like I’d just slapped you with a raw fish.”

  She opened her mouth to deny it again. Instead, laughter came out.

  She put her hands over her mouth, as appalled as she would have been if she’d belched, but the laughter kept coming. Until it brought tears.

  Finally, with mingled sighs and minisobs, she got her breathing under control.

  “Okay,” he said, “that was good for you. You certainly needed it.”
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  “You’re right, I did. Thank you.” She meant it this time.

  “You’re welcome. But if you think that’s going to get you out of telling me why you flinched when I said you’re one of the smartest women I know, you’re wrong.”

  “It’s nothing, really. I just…” He locked gazes with her, implacable. She cleared her throat. “It’s something my mother used to say to me.”

  “And that was?” he prompted.

  “‘There’s no such thing as too pretty. But you can be too smart for your own darned good.’”

  “You’re kidding. What century did she come from?”

  She chuckled, but it felt dry and tight. “It took me a while to realize that it was how she negotiated the world. Most people, I think, blend a lot of ways in order to negotiate the world. But some specialize. Some use smarts, some use anger, some use manipulation, some use niceness. My mother mostly used her prettiness. And she trained me the same way.”

  “That’s not true. You work too damned hard to think you’re getting by on your looks.”

  “Damn right I work hard. That’s part of her training. You have no idea how much hard work went into meeting her standards. There was no question of getting by on looks, not with my mother. I’ve often thought that if she had applied all the energy she put into appearances to business, she’d be CEO of General Motors by now, and they’d be doing a lot better.”

  She saw a certain look in his eyes and she shook her head. “It wasn’t that bad. Nothing like with your family. I know my parents love me in their way. And I’ve realized the prettiness is just how my mother interacted—connected—with my father. It worked for them, and she thought it would work for me, so that’s what she taught me.”

  “‘No one truly knows what goes on inside a marriage. Sometimes not even the two people who are married.’ My mother said that to me recently.”

  She smiled slightly. “Who knew Mother Stenner could be so wise?”

  He muttered something, then added, “But for you to be taught that you shouldn’t use your brain—that’s damned near criminal.”