Breakup in a Small Town

by Kristina Knight

  “I don’t like the bus,” Garrett said. “Those big kids are mean.”

  “It isn’t a far walk, Mom. And I’m practically eight now.”

  And until the tornado had sidelined Adam from work, Jenny had picked up the kids every day at school. Things were different now, he reminded himself. Just one more reason to let them get on with their lives. Without him.

  “You won’t be eight until next summer. That’s more than six months away. And your age isn’t the point, kiddo. The point is you’re supposed to ride the bus. Was this ‘miss’ intentional?”

  Though his back was to his family, Adam could picture Jenny with her arms crossed over her chest, looking from Frankie to Garrett with her pretty blue eyes narrowed and calculating. She’d hone in on Garrett as the weak link.

  The kids didn’t answer. Adam turned from the counter to her, back to him, just as he’d imagined. Garrett looked to Frankie, who stared right back at him. Neither said a word, but that look said everything. Yeah, an intentional miss.

  Jenny watched them a moment longer, but when it became apparent neither would answer the question, she shook her head slowly, then knelt before them. “What did we talk about when school started? I have to stay at the warehouse now until three thirty. That means a bus ride home. Teamwork, right? You guys ride the bus, I meet you here.”

  Frankie scuffed the toe of his untied shoe against the tile. “It isn’t fair.”

  Jenny looked at Garrett, who scooted a little closer to his older brother. “We don’t like the bus,” he told her.

  “The bus is the best option we have until Uncle Aiden gets into town in a few days. Papaw is busy with the guys in the workshop, and Mamaw is dealing with the phones and office stuff while I deal with the warehouse shipments. It’s just for a little while longer. Okay?”

  Frankie shrugged, and Garrett looked at the floor. “Guys?” she asked.

  Frankie nodded, and Garrett followed suit.

  Adam held the plate out. The kids took it to the table and began to eat.

  “Uncle Aiden will be here at the end of the week, and maybe once he’s settled, we’ll figure out a new schedule. Until then, it’s the bus after school.” The kids nodded, but kept their attention focused on the table. “I mean it, boys.”

  Jenny pushed past Adam and began to clean the apple peels off the counter. She rinsed the cutting board and small knife. She didn’t even look at Adam. “You shouldn’t be standing on that knee. You know what the doctor said.”

  Of course he knew what the doctor said. The words that damned man said circled around in Adam’s mind all day long. Don’t put undue pressure on the knee. Even the smallest twist or turn could set back his recovery, especially since they couldn’t perform the needed surgery on his leg until the epilepsy was under control.

  “Cutting an apple isn’t putting my knee under any stress.”

  “Walking on tile and hardwood is.” Jenny kept her voice even, but shot him a sharp look then motioned to the living room. She held the handles of the wheelchair expectantly, but Adam was damned if he was going to sit back in that thing and be talked to like he was a seven-year-old. He turned on his heel and walked out of the kitchen, gritting his teeth against the pain in his knee as he moved. When they were out of earshot of the kids, she said, “And what if you’d had another episode? With a knife in your hand? And the boys in the house?”

  “It’s a paring knife, Jen. It’s not going to kill me.” And nothing had happened, so what was the big deal?

  “It’s a sharp blade, and it will cut no matter how little it is.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Stop giving me that answer, Adam. You know your limitations—”

  “Peeling an apple for my kids isn’t going to kill me, Jenny.” He threw his arms to the side. “Neither is walking around in my own home instead of wheeling myself in that damned chair.” He pivoted, and pain wrenched through his leg when his Nike caught on the hardwood. His knee gave out, and as he fell to the floor, he saw horror flit over Jenny’s face as she rushed across the room. She cradled his body against hers the way she might hold one of their kids, and that annoyed him more than the pain in his knee hurt. He wasn’t a damned child. He didn’t need a damned babysitter.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” she said, her voice soothing as she ran her hands over his denim-clad leg. Once upon a time, a touch like that from her would have him hard and ready to take things into their bedroom. He pushed away the heat that flashed through him at her touch. Neither of them needed him acting like a horny teenager right now. “I don’t feel anything out of position. Let’s get you up.” She helped him to the chair.

  “Stop, just stop,” he said, when she started running her hands over his leg again. He didn’t think he could keep pushing away his physical reaction to her, not when she was this close to him. Not when he could hear her breathing take on that ragged edge. Part of him wanted her reaction to him. The other part, the smart part, knew physical attraction wouldn’t do either of them any good. Not when his body was out of his control. He grabbed her wrists and pushed her away. “I don’t need a nursemaid. I twisted the knee—it’s not a big deal.”

  “It is a big deal,” she said, but she stepped away from him, shoving her hands into the pockets of her pink capri pants. “It’ll be okay, though. Aiden will be here on Friday. I’ll figure out a new schedule for the kids, and for you. It’ll be okay. It’ll be okay,” she said again, and didn’t wait for him to answer. “I’m just going to check on the boys.” She disappeared down the hall.

  It wouldn’t be okay, Adam thought. It couldn’t. Not as long as he was in this chair. Not as long as his brain wasn’t working. Nothing would be okay for his family as long as he was sick. And he was tired of being the reason everyone in this house walked around on pins and needles all day.

  * * *

  JENNY BUCHANAN SAT on the pretty, plaid sofa in her living room, staring at the ceiling. She’d gotten the kids to bed a little while ago, and still hadn’t heard a peep from Adam. Her husband of six years had retreated to the guest room after the after-school fight. The guest room where he’d been sleeping since coming home from the hospital three months ago.

  The guest room where he’d made it clear she wasn’t wanted. Or needed. Or even invited.

  God, she hated that guest room. If she could, she’d set fire to it so she never had to deal with it again. Burning down part of the home she’d built with Adam wasn’t a solution to their current problems, though. As satisfying as it might be.

  Her mother’s chattering voice continued through the phone line, but Jenny had stopped paying attention five minutes before. She wasn’t sure if the occasionally muttered uh-huhs and okays she offered were for the poor turnout for her mother’s annual Coats for Kids drive or for the fact that her father still hadn’t fixed the loose downspout on the side of their house. Either way, she didn’t really care.

  It wasn’t even October yet. The first cold snap hadn’t hit southern Missouri. In fact, they had yet to see nightly temperatures drop under the seventy-degree mark. And, really, what was the big deal about a downspout that was only slightly off center? There were bigger problems in the world.

  Terrorism, for one.

  Her husband’s continued depression/anger/denial of the very real medical issues facing them since the tornado that nearly destroyed their town, for another. Not to mention the business issues. She and Adam had made big plans to turn Buchanan Cabinetry into Buchanan Fine Furnishings before the tornado hit; his parents had been mostly retired, splitting their time between Slippery Rock and Florida when they weren’t traveling the country in their RV. Since the tornado and Adam’s hospitalization, though, they’d moved home to Slippery Rock full-time and were now back to running the business. Straight into the ground.

  The elder Buchanans had “mislaid” messages from the
company suppliers, and when a furniture outlet in Springfield called to ask about a new partnership, they had refused to even consider the option. That was a partnership she and Adam had been working on for months, and his parents had killed the plan without even consulting her. Or Adam.

  Adam’s response had been to shrug his shoulder, get a bottle of soda from the fridge and wheel himself back into the guest room, where he shut the door and turned on the television.

  When she knocked on the door, trying to talk to him, he’d simply turned up the volume until she left him alone.

  She didn’t know how to reach her husband. She hated her job.

  She hated her life.

  More than any of those things, she hated that she felt so helpless in this situation. “Mother, I’d like to talk about me, please,” she said, detesting the whining note that came into her voice. She wasn’t whining; she’d called for advice. But in typical Margery Hastings fashion, her mom had steamrolled right over Jenny’s needs and straight into her own.

  Margery didn’t respond well to whining, though, so Jenny backtracked. “I don’t mean to belittle your problems, I’m sure Dad is just focused on work. You know, the bank was hit really hard by the tornado.”

  “It isn’t as if they had to rebuild,” Margery said, her voice stiff with self-righteousness.

  No, the bank hadn’t had to rebuild. They’d had to create loans for local businesses to rebuild, had dealt with construction companies that needed to expand to deal with the devastation, and had to explain to their corporate bosses why capital outlay had increased so much in a single quarter.

  “What I meant was that I really do need your advice. I’m just not sure how to reach Adam. He’s...not the same man that he was before the tornado.” As frustrated with Pre-Tornado Adam as she’d gotten from time to time—she’d begun to refer to him as that—she would take that reckless, carefree, playful man over the dark, depressed man living in her home any day.

  “Well, what did you expect, dear? He was in a devastating tornado, trapped in the rubble of a building for nearly a full day before help arrived. Now he’s dealing with a debilitating medical condition that is only barely under control—”

  “You’re right, you’re right. I’m being too hard on him.”

  “You aren’t being hard enough on him,” her mother said, and Jenny shook her head. She had to be hearing things, right?

  “Mother, he’s having seizures because of a terrible head injury.”

  “And you’re defending his continued ill behavior. I’m not sure why you expected anything different. He is one of those Buchanan boys. Neither of them took a single thing seriously when they were in school. I still don’t know why you had to marry him.”

  Because she loved him, and she’d been eighteen and foolish enough to believe that no matter what they faced, love would be enough to get them through. She didn’t think she could love Adam out of this dark place, though.

  She wasn’t even sure she wanted to try.

  Jenny squeezed her eyes closed. God, she was a bitch to even think those words. Adam was her husband; of course she wanted to try to fix him. Fix their relationship. Fix their family.

  “Well?” her mother said, sounding impatient.

  “I married him because I loved him,” she said, and Margery pounced.

  “See, right there. You loved him. Not you love him. Loved. Past tense. Jennifer Anne, there are times that you stand by your man, and there are times you have to be honest with yourself. This is one of those times.”

  One of which times? Jenny didn’t know. She wanted to stand by Adam. She loved him—not past tense, but now. As frustrating as it had sometimes been to deal with him being the fun, friendly, never-disciplined-the-kids dad, she loved the man he had been. Sometime in the past few months, though, she had lost that man, and she didn’t know if he even existed any longer. It was as if the tornado stole the Adam she knew and replaced him with this angry robot of a man.

  “I love him, Mother. Love. Present tense. Being frustrated at our situation isn’t a good reason to...to change that.” She couldn’t say the D word. She couldn’t. She didn’t want to divorce Adam. She wanted to wake him up. To bring him out of whatever place the tornado had left him, and move forward.

  “Well, I’m not sure how I can help you, then. I just got in from bridge club, and need to have dinner ready for your father in fifteen minutes. Call me when you come to your senses,” she said, and the phone clicked off.

  Jenny turned the receiver over and over in her hands. “That was a brilliant move, Jen—call dear old Mom for advice on one of her bridge days.” She replaced the receiver and went into the kitchen. She poured a cup of coffee into her favorite owl mug and sat at the counter, drumming her fingers on the granite countertop.

  Frankie’s army men were strewn around the living room, despite her three warnings that morning for him to clean them up. Jenny sighed and crossed the room. She gathered up the little green men and tossed them into the basket at the end of the sofa. A stack of Garrett’s drawings were wedged under the couch and she pulled them out.

  Garrett had drawn a picture of their house, with stick figures of Adam, Jenny, Frankie and himself standing before it. Jenny smiled. She and Adam appeared to be holding stick hands in the picture. She put the paper on the sofa, and froze. The next picture was the same house, but black clouds circled the roof and squiggly lines appeared to be attacking it. She swallowed hard.

  The tornado. She would reassure Garrett that the storm wasn’t coming back.

  Jenny flipped to another picture. This time no angry clouds buzzed the pretty yellow house her almost-six-year-old had drawn. Flowers popped up near the feet of the mom and the two kids in the picture, but a big black cloud was attacking another figure. A figure in a wheelchair. A figure with light brown hair and a frown on its face. A figure that was separated from the rest of the family and the house by a gaping black hole.

  This wasn’t right. She’d thought she and Adam had been able to hide the rift between them, at least from the kids. She gathered the pictures and put them in a drawer in the kitchen island, and then leaned against the cool granite. Jenny pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes.

  She had to fix this.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ADAM SAT IN the black wheelchair in the guest room of his home and stared out the window. From here he could see the still waters of Slippery Rock Lake, and he wanted to be there. In the water. Floating.

  But he couldn’t float. He couldn’t go in the water. Couldn’t take a shower alone. He couldn’t do anything that a normal twenty-eight-year-old would do because the doctors didn’t know when the next seizure would hit. God forbid he’d drown in his own shower.

  He was supposed to be grateful that the damned tornado didn’t kill him, but what kind of life was this? Trapped in a freaking wheelchair for the foreseeable future because his brain refused to work right.

  Jenny knocked on the door. For the fifteenth time since he’d left the living room, repeating the all too familiar It will be okay that she seemed to have on permanent repeat in her mind.

  “Do you want something for dinner?”

  “No.”

  She knocked again. “I made the boys grilled cheese and tomato soup.”

  His stomach growled at the thought. He loved grilled cheese and tomato soup.

  “I don’t want grilled cheese. I don’t want soup or bologna or a freaking rib eye from the Slippery Rock Grill that you’ve cut into small, little bites for me. I don’t want anything,” he said.

  Or maybe yelled. He wasn’t sure anymore. He seemed to be yelling all the time, but then he actually said only about a hundred words a day. Most of the yelling was silent. Internal. Aimed at himself.

  Because he’d been a complete fool, and if he’d just obeyed the warning sirens, n
one of this would be happening. He wouldn’t be in this wheelchair. He wouldn’t have a wife who looked at him with pity in her eyes. He’d be in his workshop right now, building something with wood and tools, something that would last for decades.

  But he’d been a fool. He’d freaked out when those sirens started blaring, and instead of being a normal, healthy man, he was a head case in a wheelchair who couldn’t do anything that any other normal twenty-eight-year-old could do.

  “Well, we have to leave for the doctor’s at ten in the morning, so... I’ll wake you before the kids go to school. Let me know if you need anything before then,” she said, and her kind, nurse-like voice made his skin crawl.

  Jenny’s husky voice used to make him hot. All she’d had to do was throw her head back in laughter or say something completely ordinary like pass the salt and he had wanted her.

  Wanted to kiss her, touch her. Do dirty, dirty things to and with her.

  Now all he wanted was to be left alone, and she wouldn’t leave him alone. Why couldn’t she just leave him alone?

  He didn’t answer, and she didn’t say anything more through the door that he refused to leave open, no matter how many times she or the kids opened it. He didn’t deserve an open door, and they deserved more than to have to deal with his brokenness because of an open door.

  Adam blew out a breath. Sometimes he wished he could wheel himself down to the lake and just float away. He could borrow a boat—his friend James had one—or he could rent one of the marina boats. Set out from the marina and just flow. If Slippery Rock Lake actually led anywhere, maybe that was exactly what he would do. Man-made lakes didn’t lead anywhere, though, except right back to where a person started, and what was the point of that?

  Adam twisted the top off his bottle of soda and drank. It was too sweet, and he didn’t really like it, but what did like have to do with anything? He finished the bottle and tossed the empty plastic into the wastebasket under the cherry desk he’d built two years before.