Jessie was silent for a minute. “How is Dee, Charles?” she asked. She felt a twinge in her belly. Lordy, but it would be nice to see Dee again.
The older man answered her honestly. Jessie’s actions left deep scars within all of them. “She’s hurting, Jessie. She misses you. She’s been worried sick. None of us knew what – if…” he couldn’t finish.
Jessie’s eyes teared as she picked a stain on her floor to focus on. She held her breath until it no longer hurt to inhale.
Soberly, Steve rescued Charles. “She’s been working a lot, Jess. But she’s hanging in there.”
It was time to hit the dragon head on. Jessie searched for the right words, begging them to come. She needed to say something in her own defense. “Look. What I did was wrong. I get that. It was selfish and unacceptable. But I felt at the time I had no choice. Deuce was after Josh. He had a hate-on for me because I love – em, loved – Josh. After…after the concert, he saw me with Josh at the Rogers Centre and…well, you know what he did to me.” She cleared her throat as they grimaced. “He threatened to kill Josh. How could I stay? And if I contacted anyone, well he would have tracked me. He’ll show up in Edinburgh now, mark my words.”
They were all quiet as they realized this was likely true. The men should have consulted Matt before coming here, but time and distance gave Charles and Steve the false illusion Jessie would be safe here. On some level they didn’t even believe they would actually find her.
In a small voice Jessie said, “I couldn’t take anymore. You know? Not just worrying about what he threatened to do to Josh, but…but what he was doing to me.”
Even as she said this, Jessie knew Charles and Stephen were still not acquainted with the whole story, about what happened to Sandy. By virtue of her selective omission, they could not possibly discern the level of her terror. But Sandy’s horrific demise was not something she could bring to the surface just yet. His memory and what happened to him was buried deep inside with the ticks, hiding in dark places.
They fingered their coffee mugs - pondering, wondering, chastened and everlastingly sorry for how things went down in Vancouver during that horrible summer.
Quietly, Jessie asked about the others even though she didn’t really want to hear about how well life seemed to be going for everyone in her absence. She wrapped small hands around her warm coffee cup and stared at the cinnamon flecks in her own foamy sanctuary.
“I’m sure you heard Charlie was married last month,” Charles said gently, unsure how she would respond to such news. Jessie just nodded. Charlie. She sincerely hoped he was happy – finally.
“Maggie is doing theatre in New York, and Sue-Lyn and Carter are working regularly,” Steve added, filling her in on the various projects the three flitted around between. “We don’t see them that often, actually.” He didn’t add that part of the reason was because their group felt incomplete without Jessie, that her absence was always felt. “And…Sophie and I got back together. I ran into her at a Starbucks of all places, last September. She has a good heart.”
And a short memory, Jessie thought, once again feeling terrible about her part in the decay of his relationship, but at the same time knowing for certain she would not have survived the Deuce McCall beating without Steve by her side.
Out loud she said, “I’m glad, Steve,” but she didn’t touch his arm like she might have a year and a half ago. She kept her hands wrapped tightly around her mug even long after she emptied it.
Charles eyed Steve tentatively. Josh was next on their list, and they knew she was waiting for some word. She kept her eyes trained on the mug.
“Josh…well, he’s got some regular work these days too. After he lost the Susanne Bier film he got picked up on a few others, including Stephen King and Martin Scorsese pictures. He made such a good villain he’s been working ever since.”
“Um hmm,” she managed to murmur. And then, to deflate the bubble threatening to suffocate them, she added, “I know he’s with someone. A publicist, I think.”
“Her name is Michelle,” Steve responded, almost too quickly. “She’s okay, Jess. She’s good for him.” He bit his tongue after saying that. Fuck! That was thoughtless. He caught himself stupidly thinking or is it feck now that I’m in Scotland?
“Good,” she said. “That’s good.” She swallowed. Well, what the hell. She had Jacob anyway. Or not.
“Look,” she finally said. “I’ll go for a little while. Maybe Deuce will show up and – and this thing will end one way or the other. I don’t know if he’ll go after Josh anymore, it’s been a while. And I don’t want anything to do with Deuce so it’s just going to have to end.” She glanced up at Charles with steely eyes. “You want me to come home? Then talk to Matt and make Deuce go away once and for all. Then I’ll maybe come back here, I don’t know.” She ran a hand through her rumpled hair. “I don’t know,” she added softly, thinking of Jacob. “I don’t want to waste any time, just book a flight for tomorrow. Or I suppose you have the jet. Well good, I’m glad. We’ll go tomorrow, okay? Because tonight there’s something I have to do.”
At the wary looks on their worried faces Jessie rolled her eyes and added, “No, I’m not taking off. In fact, you can both come. In the meantime, let’s just figure out how I can go back and stay quietly hidden for at least a few weeks. I am not going to be ready for the entertainment biz craziness for a while.”
She peeked up at Charles from between locks of lavender hair. “You might want to bring a digital recorder tonight. You are about to discover your next big star.”
At that, she turned away. “I need a shower.”
Jessie’s head was swimming – Deuce, Jacob, Josh…too many people were suddenly occupying space in her head. And Charles and Stephen were in her small flat. In the shower stall, she sat on her butt and let the water cascade gently over her head and down her face.
These next few weeks were going to be killer.
***
Chapter Eighteen
With a “so-long” kiss on top of the unfamiliar hair, Charles left Jessie alone with Stephen. As much as he wanted to know everything about her life in the last eighteen months, he knew she wasn’t ready to accept their presence just yet. Also, he was bursting with excitement and couldn’t sit still. Regardless of Jessie’s antipathy towards him, he needed to call Deirdre.
Stopping for just a minute to grab a carrot muffin and a black drip coffee from the café on the corner, Charles hoofed it for the hotel, which was a brisk walk away – but he needed the time to think, to calm down. It was a cool day in Edinburgh, grey and overcast, the air invigorating, crisp and fresh. The environment was perfect for a man whose thousand and one thoughts were jumbling around in his brain like colorful bingo balls in a dispenser.
At the hotel, he set the muffin and coffee down on a side table in his suite. Charles unbuttoned his light overcoat and collapsed on the overstuffed sofa. He needed to compose his thoughts before taking a swig of coffee and picking up the landline phone. The cell phone was not an option. What if McCall could intercept the line? Deuce could also access the hotel line but perhaps not so readily. Regardless, they would soon want to lure McCall out of his dungeon anyway. Just not yet.
Dee answered on the second ring. For only about the fourth time in his thirty plus years of marriage, Charles Keating, renowned Canadian producer of films and music, found himself at a loss for words.
“Charles?” Dee asked, “Is that you? Hello?”
Finally, mercifully, he was composed enough to speak. “Dee. Can you get to a landline? Call me at this number right away.”
He hurriedly relayed the number to his wife, replaced the telephone receiver, and waited for the phone to ring. The muffin taunted him, but Charles was too overcome with the brief time spent in Jessie’s presence to consider eating just yet. The coffee, however, went down smooth and hot, a balm for the soul.
He was quicker than Dee. Charles grabbed the receiver on the first ring. “Dee,” he said.
“Honey,” Charles said with dignity and an air of authority, “are you sitting down?”
***
After an uncomfortable afternoon spent discussing how she expected things to play out back in Canada, Jessie dressed in a red short flouncy chambray skirt and black leggings, a beige sleeveless turtleneck top, and knee-high brown leather boots. She pulled on a red sweater and threw the bomber jacket over top, then crowned her look with a brown corduroy poor boy hat. Hands in her pockets, she leaned against the picture window and waited for Stephen to finish a phone call to Sophie. A while ago, Charles had returned to his hotel to call Dee – Jessie tried not to think about what he was saying to his wife. She doubted her punky hair would go over well, although she knew that was small potatoes considering the illustrious Mrs. Keating would likely simply be overjoyed to have her back on North American soil.
Jessie straightened when she saw a dark shadow flit over the building across the street below. The amorphous presence leaned against the brick backdrop and lit up a smoke. It was Jacob, who stood there with one hand buried in a denim pocket and the heel of a black boot up against the building. He could see her in the window, she knew, because he stared right at her. He had his guitar with him. Of course, he would be on his way to the pub. The guitar was sitting at his feet like a well-trained dog – his best friend.
The moonlight caught Jessie’s hand when she raised it to the window. She let a pale white finger trail down the pane, and leaned in so her nose touched the window as well. Slowly Jacob raised a hand back to her in a silent salute. After a moment he picked up the guitar and made his way down the hill, a quiet obscure figure whose presence had greatly illuminated Jessie’s life these past few months.
Steve tapped end and pocketed his phone.
“Going somewhere, are we?” he called to Jessie’s back, breaking into her reverie, shattering the memory of Jessie and Jacob into a thousand tiny pieces.
“I am. You’re welcome to come if you want.”
Grabbing his wool pea coat from the stand by the door, Steve said, “I didn’t tell Sophie. We’ll deal with everyone when we have you safely back home.”
“What, are you afraid I’ll take off again?” Jessie waited for him to button up. “You do realize I am thirty years old. I can go wherever and do whatever the hell I want.”
Steve’s shoulders sank, and Jessie was instantly sorry. She was being a bitch.
“Look. I’m not going anywhere, okay? I’m going to see this through. Then – who knows? But you’re right, I’m tired of running.”
He threw an arm around her shoulders but Jessie slipped out from under him and opened the door.
“Why do I feel like you hate me?” He refused to move until she answered.
“What, I’m not the warm fuzzy Jessie you remember? Sorry I’m not jumping up and down about you and Charles showing up on my doorstep today.”
“Well, sorry you’re so bloody unhappy to see us after your rather ungracious exit from our lives eighteen months ago, Jess.”
Regarding her old friend with a palpable unhappiness, Jessie pushed the door open wider. It was her signal for him to make an exit and so Steve brushed by her, noting that Jessie shrank from him as he passed by.
They plodded down the hill towards the pub where Jacob and John Paul would be playing at nine. Under the stars, Steve and Jessie could have been lovers in the midst of a spat. Hands in pockets, unwilling to look at each other, they walked five feet apart, discouraged and disappointed, afraid of the days and weeks to come.
Tonight Jessie’s main focus was to say goodbye to Jacob. She prayed he would speak to her because she couldn’t fathom the thought of leaving Scotland with his resentment in her back pocket. She would also see John Paul, Charlene and Katrine for what could prove to be the last time for at least a while, if not forever. Not much wonder she was in a pissy mood. Steve did understand but he was still lost in the shock of having found Jessie, and wasn’t thinking straight. He wanted her to miss him, to love him, to want to make reparations for leaving the way she had. Mostly he wanted to touch her, to hold her, to tell her not to worry about Deuce McCall. That Matt and his security and police friends would be on high alert once Charles made the call, if he hadn’t already done so.
The only time Jessie looked at Steve during their frigid walk to the bar was when they were on their way in. She stopped just outside the entrance to the cozy pub with its warm yellow lights beckoning them inside. Pausing, she reached up and removed the poor boy hat from her head. She placed it carefully over Stephen’s blonde locks, yanked it down over his eyes and took a step back, regarding him critically.
“You’ll do,” she said, following that up with, “Drifters is hot right now. We don’t need anybody recognizing you. Not that these working class Scots are into a Canadian western, but you never know.” She stepped forward and pulled the brim even lower over his eyes. He didn’t contest her and instead stared implacably up at her from beneath the brim. Jessie softened then, and placed a cool palm on his stubbly cheek.
“Do me a favor?” she asked quietly. “Sit at the bar?”
Exhaling slowly, he turned his head away, wondering why she was trying so hard to extricate him – and all of them – from her life. Through the window he could see Jacob tuning his guitar on a little makeshift stage.
Jessie added, “Please. This is not about you or any of the Vancouver crowd tonight. I just need…I just need one more night here. To say my goodbyes, okay?”
Looking back at her, Stephen suddenly detected the cracks in her façade. He could see the earnestness in her eyes, borne of a lifetime of goodbyes.
“Okay,” he murmured. And then, because Jessie could see he was truly the old friend she missed, and that she was indeed being a bitch, she put her arms around him and held him the way he hoped she would all day. He closed his eyes and let himself hold her back.
“Thank you for understanding,” she whispered, and then she picked her way inside to her usual table of friends with self-preservation in mind, detached and reserved. Steve watched her through the window for a bit, her friends obviously happy to see her. Jacob noted her arrival, but he sat on his stool at the front of the low ceilinged room and barely nodded a greeting when Jessie looked up at him.
Before making his way down the steps Steve texted the location of the pub to Charles. He slid onto a high stool at the bar, as asked to do, and ordered a Guinness on tap. He was able to see Jessie’s table from where he sat but she had her back to him. It wasn’t long before John Paul got up to join Jacob for the boys’ first set.
As John Paul stood, he leaned in towards Jessie and planted a kiss on her cheek. “Annie,” he said with feeling, “you better plan on coming back to Edinburgh soon. Jacob’s been an ass for the last few weeks, as you can see, and I don’t see him being happy again until he has his woman back. I don’t know how much more I can take, as his lowly second rate guitar player.”
She smiled up at the boy who first introduced her to the circle of friends who made life bearable – and even fun - these last few months. “JP,” she responded, avoiding his request, “take care of him for me, okay? I already miss him desperately.”
With a sorrowful grin and a rub on her head, whereby Jessie grabbed his hand and groaned about him messing up her hair, John Paul went to join Jacob, and they started to play.
Charles arrived about hal
fway through the first set and perched on a stool next to Steve at the bar. He was wary, but pink cheeked and obviously happy. Between songs he told Steve that Dee was of course beside herself at the news. Matt had also been apprised, and was meeting with his team that very moment to implement proper security measures to assure Jessie’s privacy and safety. They would not even consider going public until after they returned home and did a post-mortem on Jessie’s comfort level.
Jacob’s music and laid back presence entranced the clientele in the small pub as usual, but it wasn’t until he neared the end of the second set that he released himself from the protective zone in which he encased himself, and threw a look at Jessie. He adjusted the microphone and cleared his throat after taking a healthy swig of the Guinness he kept at his feet.
“I have a new song I’d like to play for all of you,” he started, and then raised a hand to quiet the cheers in the room before continuing. “Only I can’t play this one alone. I wrote it with my girlfriend.” He paused, and then slowly he added “An-nie.”
He glanced sideways at John Paul and said something in a hushed tone off mic that resulted in JP removing his lanky frame from the stool and handing his guitar to Jacob.
Continuing, Jacob added, “We didn’t have lyrics at the time but I found some that seem to work. I haven’t had the chance to teach this to JP yet, so,” he made eye contact with Jessie, “I’d like to ask – Annie – to come up here and play this with me.”
Jessie froze. The evening was emotionally difficult enough. She doubted she could get through a song with Jacob, especially with Charles and Stephen within view at the bar.
“You see, An-nie,” he said her alias with emphasis on the first syllable, “is leaving tomorrow for Canada. And to be honest, I don’t know for how long.” He gazed at Jessie, who remained immobilized in the purple booth with the aged cracked table, and then added tenderly, “And I will miss her very much.”
No Greater Love Page 18