by Mara Jacobs
“No problem. Anytime. I always have them on me.”
“Oh?” I said, sounding like an idiot. Like I cared that he always had peppermint Life Savers on his person.
We were coming up on the town of Chesney, and I wondered if I should pull over and let Stick get us through the town and all its stoplights.
“Keep going, you’re doing fine,” he said, as if he read my thoughts.
At the first light I caught a red, and I stalled out when the light turned green. Cars beeped behind me, and I tried to cover how flustered I was, but Yvette knew, refusing to gently go to first. I suspected Stick knew as well.
“Take your time. Concentrate on Yvette. Fuck those yahoos behind us.” His voice was low and strong, and even though it came from his side of the car and was not whispered in my ear, it gave me the steadying I needed, and I got her in gear and moved down the Chesney main street.
“Yeah, peppermints,” Stick said as I made my way to the next light, which was also turning red, much to my dismay. I took a peek in the rearview mirror and saw all the same cars were still behind me. “I took ’em up when I first started smoking,” Stick said as we glided to a stop at the light, my feet feeling like lead as I tried to keep my hand light and easy on the shifter, placing it in neutral. Even dangling my wrist off the knob as I’d seen Stick do, trying to fake it till I made it.
Wait, what? “You used to smoke?” I asked Stick, his comment finally permeating.
“Yeah, since I was twelve.”
I looked over at him. “You started smoking at twelve?”
“Since eleven, actually, but not hardcore until twelve, yeah. Green light,” he added at the end. “Smooth as silk,” he said softly.
My mind was boggling on the eleven-year-old smoking bit. I mean, I’m not naive, but still, eleven years old?
I shifted into first and pulled through the green light. “Did your parents know you were smoking at eleven years old?”
I felt, more than saw, the shrug of his shoulder so close to mine, and yet not touching. “If they did, they didn’t say anything.”
Hardly one to comment on neglectful parenting, I kept my mouth shut.
“How long ago did you quit?”
It took him a few seconds, but he came back with, “Two years, four months and three days ago.” He took another mint from the roll and popped it in his mouth, then returned the roll of candy to his front jeans pocket.
“Must have been pretty momentous for you, if you can rattle the exact date off so easily.”
“It was also the day my father was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“Shit happens. Don’t know what he expected, being a pack-a-dayer for thirty years.”
“Yeah, that would do it.”
“Yep.”
“So…how long after the diagnosis…did he…”
“He actually hung on longer than you would have thought. Tough old bastard. I think he did it just to piss off the doctors who said he had a few months tops. He lasted a year.”
“But probably not a great year…for any of you.”
“No,” he said very quietly.
“And your mom?”
“Not in the picture.”
“During the cancer, or ever?”
“Ever.”
God, how many times had I wished that one of my parents (and it rotated which one, but mostly my father) was just…out of the picture? That they simply didn’t exist.
But was that really what I’d wanted? I guessed Stick would have liked his mother during that last year of his father’s life, even if he was, like, eighteen or nineteen himself.
“Do you have any sisters or brothers?”
“Nope, only child.” He looked out the side window, his face away from mine so that I couldn’t even catch a glimpse of it as I drove. “At least that I know of. I suppose my mom could have a whole different family out there somewhere.”
“You never tried to find out?”
I saw the gentle shake of his head, his hair a tangled mess in the back. Did the guy even own a comb? And, okay, yes, it was sexy as hell all tousled and resting against the grey cotton hoodie, but still. Guy could run a brush through it every now and then.
“Nah. She didn’t want me, I didn’t want her.” It sounded so matter of fact, but I was getting to know him a little bit now, and I called bullshit on his tough-guy words. But I kept my mouth shut.
“So, you were, like, the only one there for him that year? Or had he remarried?”
That got a genuine bark of laughter out of him. “God, no. He’d never take his head out from under the hood of a car long enough to even get a date, let alone get married again. It’s a wonder he was even with my mom long enough to create me. She must have shown up at the garage or something.” There was a tenderness, almost a jokiness in his voice as he said the last, and it made me smile. I was happy he was still turned to the window so he wouldn’t see.
“Maybe she got on one of those wheeling thingies and slid under the car beside him,” I said, playing along.
He laughed, an honest, pure, deep sound that made me bite down on my Life Saver, spreading peppermint coolness throughout my mouth.
“There’s a dipstick joke in there somewhere, but it’s not coming to me,” he said, humor still in his voice.
It felt good. It seemed that we were always either scrapping with each other, or having an awkward silence as we’d had so far today.
This joking—with each other instead of at each other—was an odd change, but it felt good.
“So, you were nurse? No lady friend to do it?”
“Right. Just me. His best friend tried to run the garage for him with my help, but after a while I didn’t want to leave him alone for very long, and then I couldn’t leave him alone, so I didn’t go into the garage.”
The humor was gone now, and I knew the rest of the story was not good. Well, I mean, obviously his father dying after a prolonged cancer battle wasn’t good to begin with. But there was something…more.
“The garage,” I said, almost to myself, like I’d found the missing piece to the puzzle.
“Yeah. It was losing money with my dad not being there. When he got an offer for it—a shitty, lowball offer—he said no at first. But the medical bills were piling up, there was no way we could pay them, even if Dad and I could both work full-time, which we couldn’t.”
“Of course not.”
“So, when the offer came a second time—still just as shitty—he had to take it. It’s almost a good thing he was dying. Giving up that place would have killed him anyway.”
“Was it enough? For the bills? For his…treatment?”
“Not hardly. It helped. It made a dent. But it wasn’t enough. And with no income from the garage coming in…”
“That’s when you started stealing cars,” I said, finishing what he probably wouldn’t have said.
“Something like that.” Denying to the end, but he was nodding. “See? Criminal with a heart of gold. Don’t you feel bad now, always crawling up my ass about my lowlife-edness?”
“But you didn’t stop after your dad died,” I pointed out.
He waved a hand, but it fell to his lap without much oomph behind it. “Details.”
Yeah, but a big detail. Stick liked the money even after his desperate need for it had been buried. Or the adrenaline. Or the power. Or the stealing-from-the-rich aspect. Whatever. He was still a car thief.
Okay, retired car thief.
“I’m sorry,” I said again. “About your father passing, I mean.” I didn’t want him to think I had any sympathy for him turning to crime. That was on him.
Probably every townie had a sob story. I supposed that was why they became townies instead of college students.
He waved a hand of dismissal at my “sorry,” and then motioned to the road in front of us—well out of Chesney, out on the country road and well past all the traffic lights behind us.
“You
did good,” he said. “After that first light, you were golden.”
I looked at the road, stunned to see how far out of town I was. And how I hadn’t even noticed each successive light we’d stopped at in Chesney. Each light that I’d apparently expertly stopped and driven through. Were we really this far out of town?
“What? Was that some kind of Jedi mind trick? Get me talking about your hard-luck story and I wouldn’t freeze up at lights?”
“Worked, didn’t it?”
Damn. It had.
We weren’t far from the turnoff to the road that Caroline Stratton’s house was on.
“So, want to make a return visit?” Stick asked. “You don’t have to just stare at the gates this time.”
“What do you mean?”
“Caroline said to bring you up to the house if we were out this way again together.”
“She did? She hates me.”
“Didn’t seem like it to me. And yeah, she said to come up and say hi.”
“And you said we—I—would?”
“I didn’t say. I honestly didn’t know if we’d do this again. This was when I was in her house on Tuesday. When you were outside.”
“Before we kissed” was what went unsaid. By both of us.
“Do you have to drop something off again? Return keys? Account for anything missing?”
“Ha. Ha.”
I smiled, liking that the barbs had returned. It felt…safer, somehow.
“No, I don’t have to drop anything off. But I should probably check in…on the garage.”
“In case one of your competitors got word that you have a garage full of priceless cars?”
“They wouldn’t dare.”
I laughed. “That would be rich, though.”
“Don’t even joke about it.” He ran his hand through his hair. “Shit. Now I really do want to check on the garage. Let’s just stop in for a minute. You can say hi to Caro and I’ll check on the cars. Everybody’s happy.”
I didn’t counter with the fact that I didn’t need to say hi to Caro Stratton to be happy, and I was willing to bet seeing my face was not going to make her day. Still, I took the turn and headed down the road that would bring us to her gates.
“Should we call first or something? It’s pretty rude to just show up on her doorstep.”
Stick fished his phone out of his pocket and texted…I assumed to Caroline.
And by the way, since when was Stick calling her “Caro” on a regular basis? That was something her family did. And I wasn’t including me in that.
His phone pinged as I neared the Stratton estate. “All set. She says come on up.” When we got to the gate, Stick told me the code and I punched it in.
I thought about all the times I’d been here with Pandora. I shuddered to think what might have happened if we’d had the code back then.
The gates opened slowly—tastefully slowly. I stalled out trying to ease Yvette up the drive.
“Maybe this isn’t a good idea,” I said. “Seems like Yvette knows I don’t belong here.”
“Do I need to come up with another tear-jerker, woe-is-me story to get you up this driveway? I’m fresh out, so you might as well pull over and we’ll walk up the damn thing.”
“Shut up,” I said, and started the car up again, easing into gear much more smoothly. I sighed. Shit, would I always have to be emotionally moved by Stick—either in sympathy or rage—to be a good driver?
I finally pulled to the middle of the circle drive, right in front of the impressive, yet understated, home.
Some sick part of me wanted to do a selfie in front of it and text it to my mother, but I kept the urge in check.
I cut the engine, but kept my hands on the steering wheel.
Stick got out of his side, then walked around to mine. I wasn’t waiting for him to open the door for me, I was debating starting the car back up and taking off.
As if he sensed it, he opened the door, reached in and took the keys out of the ignition.
“Come on, chickenshit, it’s just one small lady in one big house.”
As he knew I would, I rose to his challenge, mentally and physically, rising out of the car and following Stick to the front door.
Chapter Fifteen
“Jane, it’s so good to see you. Please, come in,” Caroline Stratton said, holding the enormous front door open for Stick and me.
Speechless, I shot a look at Stick. A “there will be hell to pay later” look that he totally understood.
He nudged me inside, following me. “I’ll explain later,” he whispered in my ear.
What Stick would need to be explaining, and what had me so shocked that I could barely walk into the grand foyer, was Caroline’s appearance.
The woman, whom I had just seen at Betsy’s wedding six or seven weeks earlier, had dropped at least thirty pounds since then.
And not in a good way.
The cancer was back. And if I had to guess (and that was all it would be, given my very limited knowledge of the disease), I’d say it was pretty advanced.
Caroline and Stick exchanged a look, and I knew it was about my reaction.
“Sorry for the intrusion, Caroline,” I said. Meaning it even more so now that I’d seen her. She was dressed in a comfy-looking designer tracksuit that hung on her, but not as much as it should have. She’d obviously bought some newer clothes recently.
Or had someone buy them for her. There was no way she could have gone out looking like this and it not be all over the news.
So she had decided not to tell the public.
And why did I think that had something to do with my father running for governor?
“Let’s go into the kitchen, shall we? I was just looking at the proofs the wedding photographer emailed. You look absolutely beautiful in them, Jane.”
I followed her through the foyer, taking surreptitious glances into the rooms that we passed. A great room done in taupe and deep blue. A study, walls lined with bookshelves and a huge, but feminine, desk in the middle of the room, lots of comfy chairs with soft-looking throws laid over their corners. A formal dining room with heavy, dark furniture and floor-length windows that looked out onto the rolling grounds of the estate, bare and frozen.
And then the kitchen, which I entered behind Caroline. She went through the room and stood by the long granite counters, then waved me toward the sunny nook, where she had a laptop open, a cup of something by its side.
“We’ve disturbed you,” I said, wishing I was anywhere but here. Curious as I was to see the inside of the house I’d stared at so many times, I felt like an intruder.
Which was exactly what I was. Exactly what I’d always been to this woman—an intruder who broke up her family.
“Nonsense. Like I said, I was just looking at photos. Sit. What can I get you to drink? Are you a coffee drinker like Stick? Or would you prefer some herbal tea with me?”
“Um…neither. Just a water, if that’s okay,” I said, making my way to the table. Stick, I noticed, placed his phone and Yvette’s keys on a place on the counter that looked like it was made for just such a purpose. And that he’d done it many times.
Which would not have been the case if he was always in the garage.
“Sit down, Caro,” he said. “I’ll get it.”
She didn’t protest, and made her way over to sit at the table, across from me. He followed her over and took her cup after glancing in it. “How about a refill?”
“Yes, please,” she said. Her body seemed to deflate then, once she was seated and Stick was taking over hosting duties. Like she had expended all her energy just answering the door and leading us to the kitchen.
She probably had.
We sat in silence while Stick puttered in the kitchen. He put the kettle on to boil, grabbed a mug from a cabinet and set it under the Keurig, which sat on the counter. No guessing where anything was. No fumbling through drawers or cupboards.
The guy knew his way around this kitchen.
�
��Take a look,” Caroline said to me, turning her laptop around. The wedding photos were on the screen, and I scrolled through them. “Didn’t he do a lovely job? I think he really captured Betsy’s and Jason’s…excitement, don’t you?” she asked.
“They’re really nice,” I said honestly. Betsy looked beautiful, and Jason looked like a man in love.
I felt a pang somewhere in my throat, and I had to swallow before I spoke. “You look great,” I added, a bit less honestly.
The Caroline in the photos looked tired now that I knew. Stylish and totally put together, but a bit ragged if you were looking for it, which no one was at the time. All eyes were on Betsy and Jason, and to a lesser degree…me. Or at least how the Stratton family interacted with me.
“It was a great dress. The shoes were killing me by the end of the night, though,” she said, and I nodded my agreement.
“Mine too.”
She turned the laptop back to face her, then patted the seat next to her. “Come sit here so we can look at them together.”
I jumped at the opportunity to not have to face her. To not have to look at the loose skin and lined face.
She wore her hair pulled back into one of her famed chignons, but her hair was dull and listless and looked like it would be brittle to the touch. And much thinner than it had been at the wedding.
But not chemo thin. Not like it was falling out in handfuls. Not like it had years ago when she’d been doing major treatments.
She wasn’t undergoing treatment. At least not chemo.
Sitting side by side, we scrolled through the shots. Stick put a bottle of water down next to me.
“A glass too, Stick,” Caroline gently said, and he nodded and got a glass for me. He refilled her tea cup once the kettle whistled, placing a new bag in it. And he made himself a cup of coffee and then joined us at the table.
“I know some bridesmaid’s dresses can be hideous, but I think Betsy picked out a beautiful dress. Did you like it, Jane? You certainly looked exquisite in it.”
“I’d hardly say exquisite,” I said.
“Know when to take a compliment,” she said with a smidgen of teacher in her voice. The same tone she’d used on Stick about getting the glass.