"The way I heard it, they did for a while, but you know their little girl Gracie isn't even Jay's. Not that he goes around advertising it, but Dave told me."
Leaning back in the booth, I shook my head. "Oh my God. I didn't know. Jay never said...."
"I don't know why he stays with her," Rita muttered, "Not many men would. Not even for their biological kids' sakes."
The two of us lapsed into a momentary silence. Jay Green was both my lover and my friend and my heart hurt to think about him willingly accepting another man's child as his own every damn night without complaint.
"I still don't get why Candy would call you," Rita said, shifting the conversation back on topic. "The slut needs to mind her own business. Did she think she'd intimidate you or something?"
"I don't know. I actually felt sorry for her at one point." I shrugged. "Thanked her for calling and telling me how she felt."
"I bet that chapped her perky behind," Rita chuckled. "Not many women would say 'thanks for sharing' in a situation like yours."
"Yeah, well, it sounded a lot nicer than fuck off."
Rita had laughed her ass off when I said that, but I knew she didn't think Candy's phone call was all that amusing. I didn't either. Since I hadn't seen Jay in two days, I was curious whether he even knew, whether Candy had lied about that little fact and he had no clue what she'd done.
Darkness still fell early in February, so by the time I donned my long black leather coat and made my way out into the shop, it was pitch dark outside. A cold wind swept through open truck bays, bringing the smell of imminent rain. My heels clacked on the concrete floor as I trudged toward the light in the tool room. Someone was sitting at the desk in there. I could see him moving in the shadows, and I figured that someone was Jay.
"Hey, stranger," I said, leaning against the door frame. "Long day?"
"Yeah. I gotta finish inventory this week. And the way these guys never put anything back where it belongs is enough to drive a man to drink." Jay smiled at me, his blue eyes crinkling at the edges.
The desk lamp painted his face in shadows, but I couldn't help noticing the dark circles, as if he hadn't slept well. Shifting from one side of the doorframe to the other, I studied his face. Jay wasn't just tired, he looked like he'd aged a decade.
"I wanted to thank you for the calla lilies. They're absolutely gorgeous." I smiled tentatively.
"I'm glad you like them, babe. You deserve gorgeous." Jay took a deep breath. "Good Lord, you deserve so much more than goregous, I...." Jay stopped and shook his brown curls. "I know Candy called you Sunday. I'm sorry."
"Yeah. That was a quite a surprise." I shrugged. "Don't suppose you could have really stopped her, but it might have been nice to have a warning."
"I know." Jay looked away, embarrassed. "I wish I could've... but everything happened so fast Sunday. Enough to make my goddamn head spin. One minute we're singing the Lord's Prayer at church, the next we're fighting like snarling cats in the car on the way home."
"What happened?" I asked, curious now.
"All of a sudden, it's like a light switch goes off and Candy's screaming at me from the passenger seat. Called me a fucking prick of all damn things. And I'm yelling at her to shut her goddamn mouth because we don't talk that way in front of our kids. She keeps on ranting at me like I'd killed someone or something. The girls are wailing and crying in the back, thinking I've just done something terrible to their momma." He shook his head, closing his eyes briefly.
"It didn't end there. After we got home, she packed my suitcase and tossed it out on the lawn. Told the girls I was leaving. That I was in love with another woman and didn't want my family anymore. Screamed loud enough that the neighbors called the sheriff 'cause they thought I must be hittin' her or something. I was so stinkin' mad when the law showed up, they cuffed me and stuffed me in the back seat of the cop car, which made the girls more upset." Jay raked his fingers through his hair. "It was hell. Pure hell."
Shocked speechless, I simply stared at him. But he wasn't even close to done.
"Candy told me she was going to phone you, screamed it in front of the girls, calling you all kinds of rude names, but since the sheriff had taken me into custody about that time and then hauled me down to the station to give everyone a chance to cool off, I couldn't do a hell of a lot about it. I finally got a telephone call Sunday night and reached Dave who first went over to the house to make sure everything was OK with the kids, and then put in a good word for me with the sheriff. He gave me a lift home to collect my truck. I been stayin' at his place past few nights, swearing him to silence, but I figured that's only gonna last until the next time he sees Rita, which is probably right about now." Jay looked at his watch, then raised his eyes to look into mine.
"It was fucking bizarre, Jess. She never said or done anything like that before. Not that we'd never fought... but this time was totally over the top. Outer space. Mental shit. It wasn't like I'd kept us a secret from her... or like she'd never done the same. The whole thing was crazy."
"So, what are you going to do? I mean you can't go back."
Jay closed his eyes again and shook his head. There was a finality in his expression that made my heart sink. I leaned against the desk, afraid my knees would buckle. Somehow I felt like I knew what was coming and I didn't want to know it in the worst way.
"I wish...." He opened his eyes and reached for me, tears welling. "Dammit," he whispered, folding me into an embrace, "I wish that were true in the worst way, babe. But it ain't. Because there's more...." He pulled away then, a deliberate separation that felt somehow unnatural.
In the light from the shop desk lamp, I could see now that Jay Green looked like a beaten man. His expression held such misery and hopelessness, I nearly gasped aloud. I wiped the tears out of my own eyes with one hand, keeping my other on his arm in a futile attempt to keep him close. Because in that moment I felt him leaving me and everything in me didn't want him to go. The realization sent a crushing wave of sadness rushing through my torso. I didn't want to hear the next words he said.
I didn't want us to end.
Looking out the tool room door into the darkness, I saw the vision I'd been hoping to see for months — the shadows of the life we'd had together. A life on horseback running wild across an ocean of grass beneath a starry indigo sky, a life of shared love and work caring for a herd of gray-white palominos, a life with three dark haired children laughing, a life that ended all too early in an attack that left us torn and bleeding in the snow, our children sobbing with ropes around their small hands.
I turned back to Jay and realized he was speaking, his voice husky with emotion. "My whole life, I kept seeing this woman's face, like in a dream, but it felt more like a memory. I only seen it when I was camping out, sleeping under the stars. When you and me met, I knew it was you because my insides felt like I was falling off a cliff. And when I read that stupid book, I knew for sure. That we were, whatta ya call it. Reincarnated together? Fucking crazy, huh?"
Nodding, I found my voice. "Maybe not so crazy. Maybe meant to be."
"I wonder about that. I wonder about a God who would bring us together against all odds. Thousands of miles — maybe hundreds of years later —only to tear us apart again. Because with the news I got today, I got no choice."
"What do you mean 'no choice?'" I looked at Jay and saw the deep grief in his blue eyes. The grief was beyond exhaustion; it permeated his very bones. The feeling wormed its way into my chest, the heavy sickness in my heart another eerie warning. This would be a shared grief, and although I'd thought about what it might mean to go back to Kevin and break things off with Jay, I hadn't ever let myself feel what that might be like. I'd kept it at arm's length distance, a mental concept, not anything too terribly close, not anything that might hurt. At least not yet. But now it appeared I too might not have a choice.
"Candy called me here at work this afternoon. She's pregnant. Explains why she got so crazy emotional. Hormones and shit. " He
looked at me and shrugged. "Swears it's mine. And, yes, I asked, dammit. I forgave her for Gracie eight years ago. Took that little girl as my own and never regretted it. But with all the rivers we've crossed since then, I wasn't about to do that again. And selfishly, I have to say I hoped the child wasn't mine, because then maybe you and I..." His voice broke off for a moment, then he continued, finding strength from somewhere. "But I can't think about that anymore now."
Stunned, I blinked at him. "So, this means...."
"This means I go home," Jay said, nodding slightly. "Commit to being a husband and a father. Because I won't let any child of mine grow up a bastard. I just can't, Jess. I could never live with myself if I did."
Jay's arms folded around me and I sank against him. I put my head against his shoulder and listened to his strong heartbeat, wanting the moment to never end. Because as soon as I stepped away, I knew we would be over. For good.
"I'm sorry, Jess. I never intended to hurt you—"
"Don't be sorry. I'm not," I interrupted, my voice breaking. "Because you should never apologize for loving someone, no matter who they are. And we should never apologize for us. I won't and I hope you wouldn't either."
"No. You're right. And I didn't. I didn't apologize to Candy for loving you. Even though she wanted me to. Never will. Because these months of loving you have been the happiest in my life. And I'm gonna miss you so bad...."
Jay kissed me then and kept on kissing me. I'm not sure the tool room desk had ever been used in quite the way we used it that night. Or since, for that matter. When I left him an hour later, I held it together long enough to get in my car and exit the parking lot. I cried all the way home and most of the night, and, if I'm honest, most of the following week.
Jay's last words to me that night had been "I'll always love you."
Without reservations my response echoed his "And I'll always love you back..."
My belief that love was a veritable force of nature no one could limit included the capacity to fall in love with more than one person, a capacity I believed all humans had — whether they allowed themselves to experience it or not. Loving Jay never impeded my ability to love Kevin Mac. In fact, three months later when Kev asked me if I wanted children, I agreed to marry him and never regretted it.
Chapter Eleven
"We gotta go, Mom. Our reservations are at seven." Kyna peeked her head into the living room, brown-black eyes impatient, her purse hanging from her thin shoulder.
"All right already," I said, setting my book on the seat of my old leather wingback chair. "When did Olivetti's start requiring reservations for goodness sakes?"
"About ten years ago," Kyna sighed. "I'm driving by the way." My daughter collected her dad's old Chevy truck keys off the sideboard as I slid an indigo shawl with star patterns across my bare shoulders. Sonoma summer evenings still got chilly.
"Who's meeting us there, now? Aunt Kenzie couldn't come, but what about Gran?" I followed Kyna's long stride out to the driveway.
"Yup. Aunt Kyra is bringing Granny Mac. Then, Uncle Jim and Aunt Jenny with little Autumn, Uncle Terry and his new girlfriend — I forget her name. Auntie Reets and Jenna for sure. Oh, and Zoe and Mattie and June of course."
"Right," I smiled, thinking of Kyna's posse of girlfriends. My daughter had the wonderful luck to be part of a fabulous group of girlfriends who were incredibly good-hearted. As for me, I had the wonderful luck to still be friends with Rita Garcia who had stood by my side through thick and thin and had practically been a second mother to Kyna the year Kevin Mac took sick, taking my sweet child on weekends to stay over with her daughter Jenna.
Sometimes it seemed like my all-too-short years with Kevin happened a lifetime ago. Other times it felt like it only yesterday. But the decade since Kev's death had been filled with the busyness of raising our lovely, willful girl child. Loneliness aside, they'd been good years for the most part. Kyna and I had been lucky to have such a close and caring extended family to help us weather the dark times.
Thanks to Kev's unfailing support in what he always called "my smarts," I'd finally left my Dum-Dum days behind and completed a Ph.D. in Psychology from UC Berkeley when Kyna was in pre-school. After years working as a Clinical Psychologist at Kaiser, last year I'd become a member of the Sonoma State Social Sciences faculty and was working on a book on social identity, how self-perceptions impact social interactions.
Revving up Kev's old Chevy pickup, Kyna shoved it into gear and backed out, taking care to check the side mirrors. On the way downtown, my thoughts strayed again to the man I'd married — only natural I suppose when a child celebrates a birthday and there's an empty seat at the table. Kev would have been so proud of his daughter, and he'd have loved to attend her seventeenth birthday party at Olivetti's. He'd have ordered the Garlic-Lovers Gallina while she and I shared a Meatsa Masterpiece and teased us the entire evening about our unrefined taste buds.
Olivetti's was packed, as usual. Our reserved table in the back corner had been boldly decorated with rainbow-colored balloons and streamers, courtesy of Kyna's friends and Auntie Rita. Amongst the whirlwind of greetings and ordering and toasting and gifting, I sensed a threshold looming. My daughter was beginning her senior year of high school in a month. She'd already applied to UC Berkeley and Stanford, and had the grades to make the cut if she wanted to study social sciences or business. She'd also queried UC Davis, not as prestigious, but since she was leaning toward the veterinary program, perhaps the better choice.
Next year at this time, Kyna would be packing to go to college and starting to plan her own life. I watched my daughter from beneath my eyelashes while I listened to Rita engage Kevin's mother in a conversation about pressure socks — my vivacious friend really could talk about anything. Kyna's thick dark hair was all Kevin's. Her golden skin, long lean body, wide smile, all Kev's too. But her eyes were deep and hazel, like mine, and her heart was a mirror image of my own humanitarianism, open and compassionate, filled with a deep desire to help others. I'd made a career out of helping others; Kyna would likely make a career out of it as well, but it looked as though her profession would lie in service to four-leggeds, rather than two-leggeds.
Collecting her empty glass, my daughter headed toward the open soda bar, her stunning waist-length hair flaring behind her as she dodged through the crowded restaurant. I watched a tall young man approach her, his golden brown curls noticeably long, his slightly cocky smile appreciative. As the young man spoke, Kyna tentatively looked in my direction. Then she shrugged and headed toward me, the young man following with dutiful determination. Grinning to myself, I surmised he'd asked for an introduction, and Kyna had acquiesced: he must either be someone special I didn't know about yet, or someone who wanted to be someone special.
I stood as my daughter approached and smiled as the handsome young man shook my hand. He reminded me of someone, but in that moment I couldn't place the resemblance. Then again, after all the clients and students I'd seen over the course of my career, everybody at some point reminded me of somebody else. Kyna pitched her voice above the crowd. I heard her say the name Jess and I nodded politely, thinking she'd introduced me. But then she laughed and simply said "Jess meet Jess."
We all laughed together then, the same name thing breaking the ice.
"Nice to meet you, ma'am." the young man said. "I asked your daughter to go out to a movie tonight and she told me I'd need to meet her mother before she went anywhere with me, so here I am."
"I see," I said, maintaining a straight face. "You're a brave man to meet the mom before the first date."
"Jess plays cornerback for the Santa Rosa Panthers," Kyna said, which immediately explained why she'd put him through the "meet the mom" formality, a test, so to speak. Jocks were typically not my daughter's type — although Rita and I had always told her "never say never" when it came to men. Kyna had undoubtedly played the "mom" card because she was still making up her mind whether she wanted to go out with a football player, not because
my opinion would make a damn bit of difference whom she dated.
"I don't mind meeting you, ma'am. Not at all. My dad would say it was only right."
The young man met my eyes with an earnest honesty I found refreshing. His eyes were a striking sunrise blue, a shade I'd rarely seen in nearly two decades of public service work. The slightly southern accent surprised me enough to ask. "Did you move to Santa Rosa recently, Jess?"
"No ma'am. Lived here in Sonoma County my whole life. My parents were born 'n raised in Texas though, so I guess I come by a twang naturally."
Kyna stepped aside to hug her girlfriend Zoe good-bye, leaving Jess and I standing momentarily alone.
Trolling for a topic of conversation, I returned to his name. Our shared name. "So how'd you become a Jess. It's not all that common. Is your father's name Jess too?"
"Funny story, that. My mother gave me my first name, Brandon — her father's name. My father gave me my middle name, Jess, after a good friend of his. So, I'm a B.J. as my coach calls me. B.J. Green, just like my dad. I go by Jess with my friends 'cause I like it better. My dad goes by his middle name too. Not sure he ever used his first name his whole life. Folks call him Jay."
My heartbeat stuttered, causing me to startle. Kyna appeared at my side, eyes wide with concern. Tucking my long salt and pepper hair behind my ears, I smiled at her briefly to let her know all was well, then asked the question I knew I had to ask.
"Are your mom and dad here at the restaurant tonight?" I kept my eyes on Jess, refusing to look around like a frightened gazelle. I hadn't seen Jay Green in probably fifteen years, not since he'd accepted a field mechanic's position out of the Caterpillar shop in Willits. At the time I figured it was his way of putting some distance between him and his home life, at least during the workweek. The thought of seeing him again made me suddenly blush, while the thought of seeing Candy kindled an unexpected tightness deep in my throat. Yet, seeing Jay's son, the resemblance so clear now, and hearing how the young man spoke about his father, I could tell the two were close.
Never Say Never (Sonoma Summers Series Book 1) Page 6