Coming Home (Jackson Falls Series)

by Breton, Laurie

  Rob set down his bottle of Heineken and looked around. “Funny,” he said, “I never noticed it the last time I was here.”

  “That,” she said, “is because you were here with the vivacious Kiki. You probably never left your hotel room.”

  “Fiore,” he said, “you’re a prude. What the hell is so wrong with recreational sex?”

  “I am not a prude. I told you I’d decided to have an affair. Does that sound prudish to you?”

  “I know you too well. You’ll never go through with it.”

  “You don’t know me half as well as you think you do, MacKenzie. I’m not exactly a stranger to the delights of recreational sex. It may have been a while, but I haven’t completely forgotten.”

  He sipped his beer. “If you’re married,” he said, “it doesn’t count.”

  Her mouth fell open. “That’s not the way I remember it.”

  “That’s because you have no basis for comparison.”

  “Oh, really? Well, for your information, great oracle, Danny and I had sex before we were married.” Smugly, she added, “More than once.”

  “Doesn’t count.”

  She bristled. “And why not?”

  “You and Danny,” he said, “got married three days after you met. That’s not recreational sex, it’s commitment.”

  “And just what the hell is wrong with commitment?”

  He held up both hands in a gesture of defenselessness. “I didn’t say there was anything wrong with it. I just said it wasn’t the same thing.”

  “Oy,” she said. “I think I need another drink.”

  ***

  “I don’t give a damn what you think,” Danny told Anna Montoya, “or why you did what you did. But there’s one thing I want from you. I want to know who my father is.”

  Her eyes narrowed, and she took a drag on her cigarette. Exhaled. “Why should I tell you?” she asked.

  “Because I’ve lived thirty-six years as a bastard, and I have a right to know the truth. I have to know where the hell I’m coming from before I can figure out where I’m going.”

  She continued to smoke her cigarette. When she was done, she crushed it out in the ashtray. “His name was Eddie,” she said. “Eddie Carpenter. He was a sailor, stationed at the Navy Yard over to Charlestown.”

  “And?”

  She shrugged. “We had a thing for a while. Then he shipped out, and I never heard from him again.”

  He raked trembling hands through his hair. “Do you know anything else about him? Where he was from? Anything?”

  “Somewhere in the Midwest. Iowa? Idaho? Something like that. Geez, I haven’t thought of Eddie in years. He was one hell of a looker.” Her thoughtful expression momentarily softened her face, erasing years from her age. “Must’ve been a strong gene pool,” she said. “You’re the spitting image of him.”

  Danny leaned forward intently. “Did he know about me?”

  “Nah. He was gone before I ever figured out why I was throwing up every morning.”

  He left her there on the couch, half-drunk, still musing over her star-crossed romance with the dashing Eddie Carpenter. At the door, he paused to look around the kitchen, at the broken window over the sink, the empty whiskey bottle on the table, the roaches that ran among the toast crumbs. He cursed and wheeled back around. Her attention was riveted on The Price is Right, and he stood in the doorway with his mouth open, not sure what to call her. Anna? Mother? Mom?

  “Mama?” he said quietly, inevitably, the only name he’d ever called her.

  When she looked up, her face softened, and he saw traces of the young girl he remembered. “It’s been a long time,” she said, “since anybody called me that.”

  “This place is a hellhole,” he said. “Let me move you out of here. Some place clean, in a decent neighborhood.”

  “I been here thirty years, Danny. This is home.”

  “It’s a rat-infested slum.”

  “Yeah, but it’s my slum. It’s bought and paid for, and nobody can tell me what to do or how to do it. I got no landlord knocking down my door, nobody telling me how to live my life. I got my independence, Danny.”

  For some inexplicable reason, he understood. “Do you suppose,” he said, “I could stop by and visit you once in a while?”

  “You really want to?”

  He thought about it. “Yes,” he said. “I really want to.”

  “Somebody might steal the hubcaps off that fancy car you’re driving.”

  He came close to smiling. “I’ll take that chance,” he said.

  “Danny?” she said.

  “Yeah?”

  “I just wanted you to know that there ain’t been a single day in the last thirty years that I didn’t think about you.”

  ***

  She slept soundly that night and awoke feeling reborn. She dragged Rob out of bed at seven and pushed his grumbling form toward the shower. He emerged human, and they ran on the beach for an hour. After breakfast, they set up their beach chairs near the water and spent the morning lounging in the sun and drinking wine coolers until they both had a buzz going. “This is decadent,” she said. “Not even noon, and we’re both half crocked.”

  He lay flat on his back, knees spread, his wine cooler dangling from slack fingertips. “Gives you a whole new perspective on life, doesn’t it?”

  “I may never go back. I may just stay here and pick up some nineteen-year-old stud muffin and spend my sunset years in drunken squalor.”

  “You’ve got a mile or two to go,” he said, studying her idly, “before you hit your sunset years.”

  She adjusted her shoulder strap. “Shut up,” she said, “and pass me another wine cooler.”

  “So,” he said, uncapping it and handing it to her, “you’ve decided on a stud muffin?”

  She lifted her sunglasses and peered at him from beneath them. “Excuse me?”

  “For that mythical affair you keep talking about having.”

  “Oh.” She tugged discreetly at her bikini bottom. “I haven’t decided on anyone yet. I’m still working on it.”

  “Maybe I can help. I know lots of people.”

  “Help like yours,” she said, “I don’t need.”

  He looked hurt. “Just to show you I’m a prince among men,” he said, “I’m going to ignore that remark.”

  “Come on, Rob. You know it’s not that easy. Surely you’ve heard of great chemistry?”

  “Geez, Fiore, you and I have great chemistry, but I don’t see us rushing to jump each other’s bones.”

  This time, she didn’t bother to lift her glasses. She just stared at him through them. “Be serious,” she said. “You know I don’t think of you that way.”

  He opened another wine cooler and took a long, slow swallow. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s look at what we have here. At one end of the spectrum, the Pope. At the other end, Attila the Hun. In between, we have one giant question mark.”

  “You’re making fun of me.”

  “I am not.”

  “Look,” she said, “celibacy is an unnatural condition. For women as well as men. Don’t you think I’m entitled to the same fun you guys have been enjoying all your lives?”

  “Sweetheart,” he said, suddenly serious, “I think you’re long overdue.”

  ***

  Danny held the scrap of paper in his hand, staring at the telephone number he’d read so many times he could have reeled it off in his sleep. This wouldn’t be like confronting his mother. If Anna had told the truth, his father didn’t even know he existed. What if he made a fool of himself? What if Carpenter refused to acknowledge him? What if his mother had lied?

  With trembling hands, he picked up the phone and punched in the number to his father’s home in Iowa. It rang several times before a man answered. Danny cleared his throat. “Hello,” he said. “I’m looking for Eddie Carpenter.”

  “Yeah, this is Eddie.”

  His innards knotted until he realized the voice was far too young. Carpenter
’s son, perhaps? His brother. Danny closed his eyes and swallowed. “This would be the Eddie Carpenter who was in the Navy back around 1950.”

  “That would be my dad. Hold on.”

  The young man dropped the phone, and Danny could hear the murmur of conversation in the background. Then an older man’s voice said, “This is Eddie Carpenter. Can I help you?”

  Danny wet his lips. “I think so,” he said. “My name is Danny Fiore, and I’m looking for a man named Eddie Carpenter who was a sailor stationed at Boston Navy Yard back in the winter of 1950.”

  “I was stationed in Boston for a couple of months. Who did you say you were?”

  “Do you remember a girl named Anna? Anna Fiore? A pretty little dark-haired Italian girl?”

  There was a pause. Then: “I remember her. Who the hell are you?”

  Danny cleared his throat. “It appears,” he said, “that I’m your son.”

  ***

  He flew from LAX to O’Hare, then hopped a commuter to Dubuque. From there, his final destination was a town so small that he flew in on a six-seater twin-engine turboprop. He’d never quite grasped the concept of family. Growing up, there’d been just his grandmother. No mother, no father, no aunts or uncles or cousins. As a result, he’d never completely understood Casey’s attachment to her various relatives, or Rob’s complex relationships with an extended family so large it made the Kennedys look like hermits.

  But the moment he saw Eddie Carpenter standing in the single room that served as a terminal, legs braced apart, hands nervously jingling the coins in his pockets, Danny understood. The man who stared back at him shared his blue eyes, his full lower lip, his dimples. Carpenter’s hair had started to gray, but his shoulders were broad, his body solid and still muscular, although he was in his mid-fifties. This, Danny thought, is what I’ll look like in twenty years.

  They stood for a long time, just staring at each other, before Carpenter said in a shaky voice tinged with a distinctive Midwestern twang, “I’ll be damned.” And held out his hand.

  Fully intending to shake hands and then coolly retreat back into his personal space, Danny grasped his father’s hand. But as they stood there, hands clasped, blue eyes studying identical blue eyes, something amazing happened.

  He discovered that he couldn’t let go.

  Carpenter squeezed his hand. Danny squeezed back. And then his father spoke the words that would change his life, the words that Danny had waited thirty-six years to hear: “Welcome home, son.”

  ***

  Beneath a whispering paddle fan, Rob sipped a 7-Up and checked his watch for the third time. He’d quit drinking around three, but Casey had gone to her room two hours ago still carrying a bottle of sticky pink liquid. She’d never been much of a drinker, and wine coolers were deceptive. You’d think you were drinking soda until you tried to stand up and couldn’t find your feet. He was about ready to go looking for her when she walked into the restaurant, wearing high-heeled sandals and a dress that in Boston would have been grounds for arrest. It was white, backless, damn near frontless. She smiled and began crossing the room to his table. And every man in the place looked at her, then at him, every damn one of them trying to figure out what a guy like him was doing with a woman like that.

  She’d put her hair up into some kind of elaborate concoction that lent her an aura of sophistication that intimidated even him. It was the craziest thing; they’d spent the better part of twelve years living inside each other’s pockets, but as she approached, his throat dried up like the Sahara. He emptied his drink in one quick gulp as she slipped into the chair opposite him. “I hope I didn’t keep you waiting,” she said.

  “Fiore,” he said, “I’m at a loss for words. That is some dress.”

  She shifted position, looked down at herself, nervously adjusted the material in an attempt to cover more flesh. It didn’t work. “You don’t think it’s too much, do you?”

  “It’s spectacular. And you look stunning in it. Or you would, if you’d stop fidgeting.”

  “I can’t help it. I feel naked.”

  “You damn near are.”

  “I knew it,” she said, scraping back her chair. “I knew it was too much. I’m going back upstairs to change.”

  He caught her by a slender forearm. “Stay. I’m trying to cultivate a reputation as a stud.”

  The waiter arrived, and she ordered a Singapore Sling. “You might want to go slow on the hard stuff, kiddo,” he said. “After all those wine coolers, you’ll have a big head tomorrow.”

  “I can hold my liquor, MacKenzie.”

  “Who are you trying to kid, Fiore? I’ve seen you get tipsy just sniffing the bottle cap.”

  While they waited for dinner to arrive, she sipped her Singapore Sling and he tried not to stare at her breasts. He’d been trying not to stare at them ever since he’d first seen her in that nothing little bikini. In his book, bigger was not necessarily better, and Casey Fiore had a pair of ripe little peaches sweet enough to bring tears to his eyes. Round and firm and high, they cried out to be touched, and they’d kept him awake for a good part of last night.

  It was crazy, because in all the years they’d known each other, he’d never thought of her that way. Not more than once or twice. There had been that one sticky night in Arkansas when she’d come fresh from the shower, his tee shirt plastered to her damp body, and he’d nearly swallowed his tongue. But it had been a brief moment in time, easily forgotten. He trusted her with an absolute certainty he’d never known with any other woman. It had never mattered that Danny was the one she slept with, because that wasn’t what he wanted from her. He could get sex anywhere. Casey gave him something better: warmth and wisdom, sass and strength, respect and laughter and unconditional love.

  Somewhere in the course of that first Singapore Sling, she stopped fidgeting. By flickering candlelight, she rested her chin on her palm and studied him with a Mona Lisa smile. “What?” he said.

  “You’re looking particularly handsome tonight,” she said.

  That was when he knew the booze had gone to her head. By no stretch of the imagination could he be called handsome. The Danny Fiores of the world were handsome. The Rob MacKenzies were average. It was a simple fact of life, one that had never bothered him until now. “Sweetheart,” he said, “you’re drunk.”

  She leaned on both forearms, low over the table, giving him a brief, unobstructed view of paradise. “I’ve never been drunk in my life,” she said.

  Where the hell was their dinner? He was about ready to invade the kitchen in search of it when the waiter arrived with a laden tray and began setting dishes on the table. “I’d like another drink,” Casey said.

  He exchanged glances with the waiter. “Babe,” he said, “don’t you think you’ve had enough?”

  “Come on, Rob. I thought we came here to have a good time.”

  The waiter flashed him a salacious grin, and he made a mental note to cut five percent from the guy’s tip. “I just don’t want you to have too much of a good time,” he said.

  She patted his cheek. “You take such good care of me.”

  “Shut up and eat your dinner. You need something in your stomach to absorb all that alcohol.”

  Dinner was a curiously silent affair. Casey nibbled at her food, but Rob found that his appetite had deserted him. He watched her eat, relieved when the meal was over. After he paid the check, stiffing that leering son of a bitch on the tip, he pulled out Casey’s chair and helped her to her feet, afraid she’d fall off those three-inch heels. She had enough booze in her to fell a longshoreman.

  Music floated out of the lounge as they passed, and like lemmings to the sea, they were drawn in. They stood just inside the doorway watching couples move around the floor to the kind of soft, romantic music their parents had danced to a generation ago. He saw the wistfulness on her face, and he touched her bare arm. “Come on, sweet stuff,” he said. “Let’s dance.”

  It was a mistake. He knew it the instant that warm b
ody melted into his and he forgot who he was, forgot who she was, remembered only that he was a man and she was a woman and she felt like heaven in his arms. She rested her head on his shoulder while he tried to figure out where to put his hands. It wasn’t an easy decision. The dress left her bare in all but the most crucial spots, and he finally gave in and rested both hands on the small of her back. Her heat pierced his fingertips and radiated into and through his body. Her hair smelled like violets. He fixed his eyes on a single freckle on her bare shoulder. Beyond it, in the heated spot where their bodies met, the dark hollow between her breasts was visible. He swallowed. Closed his eyes. Buried his face in her hair and clung to her in agony and ecstasy.

  Until he could stand it no longer. “Babe,” he whispered.

  She looked at him, those green eyes hazy from the alcohol. “What?”

  “I need some fresh air.”

  He let her go with a mixture of reluctance and relief. Side by side, they walked down to the beach, both of them thinking private thoughts they didn’t choose to share. The alcohol had finally taken its toll, and she was wobbly on the heels. When they reached the sand, she bent and slipped them off. Dangling a sandal from each hand, she walked beside him, every so often listing in his direction. At the water’s edge, she dropped the sandals and waded into the surf. He kicked off his shoes and rolled up his pant legs and waded in after her, water washing around his ankles. He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Hey,” he said to her retreating back, “where do you think you’re going?”

  “Swimming.”