She tried to jerk away. "I'm heating a casserole here!"
"Leave it. We are out of here. Now." He half pushed, half dragged her toward the door to the dining room. Delilah had the sense to step aside when they got to her. "Thanks for the beer, Sam," Billy said over his shoulder.
Sam muttered something indistinguishable in reply. "Wait." Delilah's voice stopped Billy in midstride.
He turned, keeping a good grip on the uncooperative Sharlee. "Yeah?"
"Did you bring her here?" Delilah's black eyes burned with accusation.
Billy shook his head. "She came by herself. And Sam didn't invite her. When the doorbell rang, he thought it might be you."
The fire and rage seemed to flow out of Delilah, then. She slumped against the door frame. Behind her, Sam said her name once more. She turned to him. "Oh, Sam…"
Sharlee was still squirming, making little, yippy complaining sounds. Billy headed for the door again. She dragged her feet all the way, but somehow he managed to hustle her out of there.
She started crying before he could get her into her little compact car that waited on the street behind his Cherokee. "Oh, I only wanted to help. I only wanted to do something nice for Sam. I … care for Sam. He's been so good to me, so patient with me on the job. And she doesn't appreciate him. She's a cold woman. She's forty, at least. And she never gave him any children. It's all over town, everyone's talking about it. She doesn't deserve him. She doesn't even begin to understand the needs of a man like Sam. She—"
There was more in the same vein. Billy tuned it out as he tried to decide what the hell to do with her. If he put her in her car, she'd only sit there behind the wheel, blubbering away. She might even decide to wander back into the house. Or Delilah might come out again, or glance out the front window. Anyway he looked at it, he only saw more hell to pay.
"Oh, Sam, Sam," Sharlee chanted between hiccups and sobs. "Sam, why won't you let me help you? Sam, why won't you see me as the woman I am?"
Billy led her back to the Cherokee and boosted her into the passenger seat. She went on wailing and jabbering as he buckled her in. "I am no one, I have no one. I came to this town hoping to make a new start. But there's no new start for me. Oh, Sam, Sam, you were my new start!"
"Where do you live?" Billy asked, after he'd climbed into the driver's seat and started the engine.
"Live, live. Where do I live? How will I live? Who am I? Who will ever care?"
He flipped open the glove box, shoved a few CDs out of the way and found the little package of Kleenex he'd stuck in there a while back. He handed it to her.
"Thank you. Oh, thank you." She managed to get a tissue out and blow her nose resoundingly. "You're nice. A nice man."
It was the first time in his conscious memory that anyone had called him nice. He couldn't decide whether he liked it or not. He asked again, "Sharlee, where do you live?"
She muttered an address on Pine. He put the Cherokee in gear and steered it out onto the main part of the street.
As he drove through the darkness, Sharlee alternately sobbed and blew her nose and bemoaned the emptiness of her life. When he pulled to a stop in front of the small, rather run-down cottage at the address she'd given him, she turned to him. "Thank you. I heard so many terrible things about you. Now I know never to trust what other people say." She paused, to sob and sniffle. "Tell Sam goodbye for me, please. I won't be bothering him anymore. After tonight, I'll never bother anyone again." She popped herself out of her seat belt and leaned on her door.
Billy watched her as she started up the concrete walk, thinking that her chatter could drive a man bonkers, but she really did seem like someone who needed a friend.
And he hadn't liked the sound of her final remark. It sat on his mind, heavy and ugly with meanings he hated to let himself understand: After tonight, I'll never bother anyone again…
He pushed open his door. "Sharlee. Wait up."
She stopped in the middle of the walk, a small, forlorn figure, shivering in the light of the waning moon. He jumped down from the Cherokee and ran to her side. "Look. I don't think you should be alone tonight."
She stared at him, her eyes wide and wet, her mouth working in misery. And then she let out a loud wail and threw herself against his chest. "Oh, I can't ask you! It isn't right! I'm not your problem, not at all!"
He gave her an awkward pat on the back. "Hey. You come on, now. I'll take you home with me." Prue probably wouldn't be thrilled about this. But she'd no more be able to turn away poor, pitiful Sharlee than he could right then.
The porch light of the house next door to Sharlee's popped on just as Billy was leading her toward the Jeep again. He paused, caught by something familiar about that house.
And then he got it: it looked a lot like Prue's house. Right then, a tall, skinny woman in a blue robe with a blue hair net on her head came out the front door.
"What is going on out here?" Nellie Anderson demanded.
He should have known. He herded Sharlee toward the Jeep, calling over his shoulder as he went, "Nothing, Mrs. Anderson. Everything's under control."
"Is that you, Billy Jones?"
"Yes, Mrs. Anderson, it's me."
"What are you doing to that girl?"
Sharlee piped up. "It's all right, Mrs. Anderson." She paused to try to control a sob. "He's … helping me."
"Oh, my dear. Help from him is the last thing you need."
Billy hustled Sharlee to the passenger side and pushed her in. Then he hurried to get in on his side.
"Billy Jones, do you hear me? I will call the sheriff's office!"
He jumped in. "Good night, Mrs. Anderson!" He pulled the door shut and drove off.
* * *
Prue must have heard them coming up the walk. She pulled open the front door before they even got there. And then she didn't say a word. She just looked very slowly from Billy to Sharlee and back again.
Sharlee, still clinging and crying for all she was worth, gave an extra loud sob. "I…I needed help. And Billy was there…"
Prue moved back. "I suppose you'd better come in."
Billy pushed Sharlee inside and kicked the door shut. "This is Sharlee. Sharlee—?"
"St…St…Stubblehill," the girl said, stuttering to try to control her sobs.
Billy added, "Sharlee is Sam's clerk."
"Oh," Prue said, as understanding dawned. "I see."
Billy explained, "There was some trouble, at Sam's house. Sharlee came by after I showed up. And then Delilah arrived next." This description of recent events sent Sharlee into a fresh fit of weeping. She grabbed Billy's jacket front and pinned herself against him again.
"Sharlee is … real upset," Billy said.
"Yes. I can see that."
"I thought we could put her in my room."
Prue started to get pinched-faced. "Your room?"
He gave her a look of high-principled disdain. "And I can take Jesse's upper bunk."
She blushed – in embarrassment over how she'd misjudged him, he knew. "Oh. Yes. All right, that makes sense."
He peeled Sharlee off the front of him and gave her a gentle push. She fell into Prue's arms. "Oh, oh. Thank you, thank you," the girl whimpered, clinging as hard to Prue as she had to Billy.
Prue immediately did what women do. She rubbed and patted and made soothing sounds. "There now, come on now. It's all right. It's going to be all right…"
"You settle her down a little. I'll go ahead and change the sheets on that bed for her."
"There, there…" Prue paused to give him a nod. "Yes. Change the sheets." And then she began leading Sharlee toward the sofa. "Come on, sit down. Here are some fresh tissues. You cry it out. And then, if you'd like, we can talk a while."
The phone started ringing.
"I'll get it," Billy said. Prue didn't even hear him. She was too busy hugging Sharlee and urging her to let it all hang out.
It was Jack Roper on the phone. "What the hell's going on, Billy? I just got a call from
Mrs. Anderson. She said—"
"Let me guess. That I kidnapped her neighbor."
"Something along those lines."
Billy briefly explained the events of the evening.
When he was finished, Jack suggested wryly, "As an officer of the law, I'd advise you to avoid all contact with Mrs. Anderson."
"I'm trying, Jack," Billy said. "I truly am."
* * *
Sharlee took an hour to stop sobbing. And then, intermittently breaking down again, she told Prudence her life story. Her father had died when she was very young. She'd been raised in Southern California by an indifferent mother and a stepfather who favored his own natural children over her. She'd completed two years at business college. She'd come to North Magdalene to make a new start.
"But I can see now, I'm never going to fit in here. Sam never did fall in love with me at all. He was just trying to be nice to me, to help me out, since I worked for him and I was new in town. I understand that now, after seeing the way he looked at that awful wife of his tonight. And I can see the writing on the wall. I'm not a complete fool. Even though Sam didn't touch me, I've ended up the bad woman anyway. Everyone thinks I'm some kind of husband-stealer. And that wife of Sam's, she's a Jones. Everyone will take her side. No one goes against a Jones in this town. Oh, it's just not going to work for me here. Like always, I've failed."
Prudence sat on Billy's freshly made bed with the girl, hugging her and passing her tissues and listening.
"I have to leave this town. I have to get out of here."
"Sharlee, listen. Don't try to make any decisions tonight. You'll get some sleep. Things will come clearer in the morning."
"Yes, you're right. I know you're right…"
* * *
It was a little past one in the morning when Prudence finally left the guest room. Alone in the dim dining room, she paused to take off her glasses and massage the bridge of her nose. When she put them back on again, her gaze fell on the roses Billy had given her. They sat in a cut crystal vase on the dining-room table. They were halfway open now. Prudence smiled, looking at them.
She went to the living room and turned off the light. Then she climbed the stairs, ready for the comfort of her bed.
Outside the door to Jesse's room, she paused. And then, as quietly as she had closed the door on the sleeping Sharlee, she turned the knob.
The light from the hall spilled in. If she wasn't careful, she would wake the two in the bunk bed across the room.
Quickly and quietly, she slipped inside and closed the door all but a crack. Then she tiptoed over to where father and son slept. Jesse lay sideways, his head against the wall and his little toes hanging off the side of the bed. She gently straightened him up and then covered him with the blankets he'd kicked down. She indulged herself and kissed him, very lightly, on his warm, soft cheek. And then she rose and turned for the door.
"You gonna tuck me in, too, Prue?" The whisper came out of the darkness of the upper bunk.
She smiled in spite of herself and whispered back. "Not a chance."
"Sharlee said I was nice, Prue. What do you think of that?"
"She was right. You were nice to her."
"Could this be a trend?"
The question sounded rhetorical, so she didn't attempt to answer it. She went on toward the door.
Just before she slipped out, he murmured, "G'night, Prue."
"Good night, Billy." She slid around the door and out into the hall.
* * *
The next morning, Sharlee called Sam and told him she thought it would be best if she didn't work for him anymore.
"Well," Sharlee said, after she'd told Sam goodbye and hung up. "That's that, I suppose. He was very nice. He said he … understood. And that he'd make up a final paycheck for me. It'll be ready for me to pick up anytime after eleven at the store." Her lower lip quivered a little. "He left my casserole in the oven too long. It burned to a crisp and then he ran cold water on it and the dish cracked."
Billy, sitting at the kitchen table nearby, could see that the tears were on their way. To forestall a whole new shower of them, he suggested, "Come on, I'll take you over to pick up your car, how's that?"
"And then I have to go to my house, don't I?" She sank forlornly into a chair, her lower lip quivering away.
Prue jumped in. "Well, if you'd like to come back here—"
Sharlee didn't even let her finish making the offer. "Oh, yes. I would. Please."
Billy shot Prue a sideways why'd-you-do-that? glance. Her gaze slid away so fast, he knew she understood.
"Uh, yes." Prue forged on with it. "We can discuss your options. And you can come to a decision about where you'd like to go next."
* * *
Billy ended up going over to the store to pick up Sharlee's check for her. She felt it would be too difficult to face Sam again, after all that had happened.
At the store, Sam handed him the check – and the hat and shades he'd left at Sam's house – and thanked him for stepping in and taking Sharlee out of the picture the night before.
"Did you work things out with Delilah?" Billy asked.
Sam, who had seemed reasonably alert when Billy entered the store, got that faraway look in his eyes again. "We talked. But nothing's solved." He looked down at the register counter, then off toward a barrel of shovels that stood in a far corner. "She went back to her room at the motel." He shot a glance around the store, though they were the only two people there right then. When he spoke again, he leaned across the counter and pitched his voice low. "She says she feels like she's not woman enough anymore."
Billy remembered his cousin, dressed in red, standing in the kitchen doorway, her hair all wild around her face. "If she's not woman enough, I don't know who is."
Sam grunted. "Yeah. But all the same, she's killin' me with her damn doubts. She says those doubts are all about herself. But that isn't true. Those doubts of hers have spread wide enough to include me. She doubts me, too. She thinks I'm just gonna find another woman, one to have kids with. She doesn't trust me – and how's a man supposed to live with that?"
These were not questions to which someone like Billy was likely to have answers. But he didn't much mind standing there, listening and nodding and shaking his head. Somehow, he'd become the guy that Sam could talk to. And he supposed that was okay with him.
Sam said, "And who says she couldn't have a kid, if she found someone else? All those damn tests we took came out showing there wasn't a thing wrong with either of us. But do I accuse her of lookin' elsewhere?"
Billy shook his head.
"Hell no, I do not," Sam answered his own question. "Maybe I got a few doubts of my own, you know? Maybe I wonder, am I man enough? But she's the woman here. And she thinks that makes her the only one with feelings. You know what I'm sayin'?"
Billy nodded.
Right then, the shop bell rang. Two men came in. Sam sucked in a breath and drew his huge shoulders back. "Thanks for listenin'."
"Anytime."
Sam dredged up a smile for his customers. "Can I help you folks?"
* * *
Three days later, Sharlee was still sleeping in Billy's bed.
And Billy had had enough. Exactly one week remained of his visit. And then decisions would be made, changes would come.
Before his time was up, he wanted his damn bed back. And he wanted a chance to have that love affair with Prue. It was a chance he couldn't see himself getting with Sharlee underfoot all the time, looking forlorn and pondering her "options."
In one of their rare moments alone, he gave Prue clear instructions. "Get rid of her. Now. "
She cast him a long-suffering glance – and Sharlee walked into the room.
Finally, on Friday, after he got Jesse into bed, he marched downstairs, where he found Sharlee on the sofa and Prue in the armchair. Sharlee, as usual, was babbling away.
"And I just, well, I know I should get myself motivated. I know I need to pack up my things and move on.
And I intend to, Prudence. You know I do. Really soon."
Billy strode over and grabbed Prue's hand. "Come with me." He looked at Sharlee. "We need a little time. Alone." He tugged on Prue's hand and she actually got up.
Sharlee said, "Well, of course. I don't want to interrupt anything, I honestly don't. You just go ahead. You just—"
"Fine. We will." He pulled on Prue's hand again and she followed along behind him, up the stairs. When they got to the top, he asked, "Your room okay?"
Her eyes narrowed. Clearly, she didn't trust him anywhere near a bed.
"Oh, come on," he said.
"Well, all right."
He pulled her in there, shut the door and leaned against it, so she couldn't get away until he'd said what he had to say. He glanced around. The room reminded him of the inside of a cloud, all soft grays and different shades of white. She had a nice, wide four-poster bed, with a white lace canopy and a fluffy white quilt and lots of big, soft white pillows. The windows had white trim and almost-white lace curtains. On the walls she had pictures of flowers and botanical prints, all matted and framed, along with several photos of Randi and Jesse.
"This is nice," he told her.
"You got me in here to admire my room?"
He cast her a look of great patience. "Prue. She really has to go."
"Well, I know that, Billy. And actually, I have been thinking…"
Relief washed over him. "You have?"
"Maybe if we helped her to find a job…"
"That occurred to me, too. So I've already called Alexis – the manager at my club? She'll take her on as a waitress."
Prue shook her head. "No, I think she'd be happier doing something else."
"Such as?"
"Well, she has a bookkeeping background. And she's told me she has a hunger to contribute something meaningful to the world." If Sharlee had a hunger, Billy doubted it was for meaningful work, but he had sense enough not to say that. Prue smiled, "Maybe the foundation."
"The foundation?"
"The Jesse Wilding Needy Children's Fund."
"Whatever you say."
"You disagree?"
"Hell, no."
"Billy, you just snorted."
"Look. If Sharlee wants meaningful work, let her have meaningful work. Especially meaningful work four hundred miles away from North Magdalene."
The Taming of Billy Jones Page 14