“You sound a lot more charitable when you talk about him, too,” Madison said, her tone just a little too light for my taste.
“I wrote him a letter the day after we made a truce.” I smiled smugly at the copy of Corduroy I’d just picked up.
Madison turned to me, all laughter gone from her eyes. “Oh, please tell me you didn’t send it.”
I laughed. “And I thought you were on my side.”
“Oh, I am.” She hurried to catch up. “But my boyfriend is in security forces, and I’d really like for him not to arrest you for threatening an active duty military member.”
“Who’s the worrywart now?” I nudged her arm. “And you said you didn’t have a boyfriend.” Her scathing look made me laugh even harder. “I promise, the letter is safe in my desk. But anyway, I just…I want to understand him and why he’s so intent on driving me crazy and himself into the ground for all the sleep he misses because of her. There has to be a reason.” He was too…well, too attractive not to have a reason. The guy was brilliant. I’d glanced at one of the study manuals he’d left on the counter the week before, and it boggled my mind that anyone could understand it. And he could be devilishly charming when he wanted to. I had little doubt that he could be doing something that paid a lot more than what he was doing now.
So why was he so determined to keep Jade himself?
“You know,” Madison said quietly as I picked up a silver fairy tale anthology, “sometimes you don’t have to understand everything. Sometimes you just have to live.”
I sighed as I checked the price then put it back. “I know,” I said as I lovingly ran my fingers over the silver filigree.
“Why aren’t you buying that?” Madison nodded at the book.
“It’s too expensive.” I made a face. “And I don’t really need it. I’ve got other fairy tales in the unit books we can work on.”
“Jessie.” Madison huffed as she grabbed the book again and shoved it into my bag. “Buy the book.”
“But—”
“Sometimes,” she said, daring me to argue with her glare, “you just have to have fun and live a little. What was I trying to tell you last week?”
“I have no idea.”
She glared. “Buy the dang book.”
13
Fun
Jessie
My day at the book warehouse sale had been nearly as therapeutic as I’d hoped, and I was decently prepared to face Derrick again after my day off. Letting myself into the house with the key Mrs. Allen had given me, however, still felt strange. It felt weird to walk into someone else’s house unannounced. But just as I was about to announce my arrival, I caught the sound of arguing in the kitchen. Not wanting to intrude, I hung back in the entry, hoping it would be over soon.
“…just don’t understand why you don’t have a wedding date yet. You’ve been engaged for almost half a year.” It was Mrs. Allen.
“I’m aware of that, Mom,” Derrick snapped. “But unless my bride sets a date, I can’t do a darn thing now, can I?”
“Derrick Allen, you had better not have done something to upset her.”
“What business of that is yours?”
“Amy is the one thing in this world that you have done right. She’s beautiful and smart and has her head on straight. All the things you need. And if you do something to lose her, so help me, I’m not even sure what I’ll do with you.”
Ouch. I wasn’t a Derrick fan of any sort, but I couldn’t imagine my mother talking to me like that. Derrick was talking again, but I decided I’d listened in long enough. I opened the door again and closed it loudly this time.
“Hello?” I called as though just getting in. “I’m here.”
The arguing abruptly ended, and Mrs. Allen came out a moment later to greet me, all signs of their argument gone.
“Good morning, Jessie. I’m just about to go, but I left some take-out in the fridge for you from last night. You can have it for lunch if you want.”
“Thanks so much.” I had to work to keep the smile on my face this time. “I hope you have a great day.”
She grabbed her purse and called goodbye to Jade before leaving. After she’d closed and locked the door behind her, I dared a peek at Derrick. He’d followed her out, but now he turned to go back into the kitchen, still muttering under his breath.
We didn’t speak much for the rest of the morning. Derrick seemed lost in La-la Land, which would have been fine with me, had I not heard his mother’s words that morning. So I did my best to get Jade ready quickly, and I didn’t complain at all when he put her in the car and buckled her in himself.
I couldn’t keep my mouth shut or my sympathy high, though, once we realized it was the therapy center’s first day at their new location. We also learned rather quickly that we didn’t know where that was, even with GPS.
“I told you that you should have turned left back at that last light.” I shook my head and sipped coffee from my travel mug.
“What?” Derrick asked. “And lose out on our adventure?” He seemed to have forgotten about his mother’s jabs and was in finer form than ever.
“Thanks to your little adventure, we’re going to be three minutes late.” I looked at my phone’s map in dismay. Jade’s therapy center had moved to what they called a “more central” location. But I was really beginning to doubt that moniker.
Derrick came to a stop so fast I shrieked as coffee spilled all over my lap.
“You really are a beast,” I muttered as I grabbed a tissue and began to pat my jeans dry.
“I’m okay with that.” He grinned unashamedly as the light turned green. “The beast got his girl in the end.”
“Lucky for him, he got to change back into a prince. You never had that option to begin with.”
“Ouch.” He gave me a patronizing look. “No fun today, are we?”
I held his startling blue gaze for a long minute before pulling out my phone again. That’s it. I was going in for the kill.
“What are you doing?” he asked after several minutes of silence. I couldn’t help being a little thrilled at the suspicious look in his eyes. Good. Served him right.
“You are the third person to accuse me recently of not knowing how to have fun,” I said, holding up my phone so he could see. “So the three of us are going to have more fun than you ever imagined.”
He squinted at the screen. “What is that?”
“Guess what, Jade?” I gushed, turning around in my seat. “We’re going to the diamond mine next week!”
“Yay!” she squealed, nearly dropping the book she’d been looking at.
I turned back to Derrick triumphantly. “A full day of digging for diamonds. Doesn’t that sound like an adventure?”
For the first time since I’d met him, he looked truly miffed. “That’s your idea of fun?”
“Of course!” I feigned surprise. “Who wouldn’t want to go digging in the dirt for a full day?”
“Jessie, I don’t know—”
“We mine! We mine!” Jade was singing from the back seat.
I took another sip of my coffee and batted my eyelashes at him. “See?” I asked in a saccharine voice. “Who says I don’t know how to have fun?”
14
Why
Jessie
My chance for fun came sooner than I thought. After Jade’s therapy, we got back to their house for lunch, and as soon as he’d finished off his triple-decker meatball sandwich, Derrick passed out on his mother’s couch. He crashed so hard that by the time I found him he was snoring hard, and a little bead of drool had formed at the corner of his mouth.
Part of me wanted to feel sorry for him. The guy was working all through the night then driving us everywhere we went. I hadn’t even been able to convince him to leave me alone with her for more than an hour. He was obviously exhausted, and I would have thought the whole thing ridiculous. Except that after hearing about Jade’s incident, whatever it had been, I could see it had shaken him to the core. His
weird interrogation at our first meeting was starting to make sense.
But sympathy wasn’t going to help me much this afternoon. I’d told him I would need to leave early to take my mom to the doctor to get a blood test done, and he’d been more than happy to take Jade. Now that he was so comfortably unconscious, however, it seemed a shame to wake him. It also made me uncomfortable to leave Jade as the only conscious one in the house, particularly with their ginormous pool in the backyard, even if it did have a gate.
The fact of the matter was that Derrick needed sleep.
I needed to leave.
And he needed to see that I truly could take care of Jade all on my own for one afternoon.
“Jade.” I popped my head into the kitchen, where she was playing with her string cheese while she looked at the same picture book she’d had in the truck earlier. “Finish up and get your shoes. We’re leaving in just a few minutes.”
She looked at me but didn’t put down her cheese. “Where?”
“We’re going to have a girls’ day.” I winked. “We might even get a smoothie.”
Jade shoved the rest of the cheese in her mouth and trotted out to find her shoes. As she put them on, though, she cast an uneasy glance at her brother.
“Coming?”
I shook my head and put my finger to my lips. “Your brother is really sleepy right now, so we’re going to let him sleep while you and I go out and have some girl time.”
She nodded and finished putting on her shoes, but the little crease didn’t leave her forehead as she grabbed her book and followed me out the door.
I felt like a nefarious kidnapper as I moved her car seat to my car. This was what her parents hired me to do, I reminded myself. Derrick had decided to insert himself into the equation, but he’d never been a vital part, to begin with. For some annoying reason, I couldn’t make the guilt go away completely, but it wasn’t enough to stop or even slow me. So I settled for leaving a note on the door letting Derrick know where we were going and that we’d be back in three hours.
“All right,” I said as I buckled my own seatbelt and turned to back out, “it’s a girls’ day! We’re going to run an errand at the doctor with my mommy, then I’m going to get you a smoothie. Are you excited?”
Jade shrugged. She was looking at her book again.
“What flavor do you want? We can get strawberry, vanilla, blueberry, cherry, you name it.”
No response.
“Hey, pretty girl.” I glanced in the rearview mirror. “What’s wrong?”
She shrugged again as she looked out the window. “Nothing.”
“Then why won’t you talk to me?”
“Thinking.”
“Oh.” That wasn’t the answer I’d been anticipating. But I didn’t have time to focus on it because my phone began to buzz. “Hey, Mom,” I said, putting it on speaker. “I’m on my way.”
“Sounds good. I’ll be waiting for you.”
Sure enough, my mom was standing outside the house when I pulled up. She hopped in and gave me a kiss.
“Thanks for doing this, but you really didn’t have to.”
“I want to, Mom.” I nodded at the back seat. “We have an extra friend with us today.”
“Hi, Jade.” My mom turned around to wave, to which Jade gave her a glimpse and then looked back down at her book.
“Why are they having you come back in anyway? You had your test last week.”
“Who knows? He said it was nothing serious. They just need to do a little more bloodwork, that’s all.”
“I don’t like them not telling us on the phone.” I frowned at the road. “It makes me suspicious.”
“Oh, quit worrying so much. I’m sure it’ll be fine. If it was that important, he wouldn’t have waited long to schedule me.”
“Mom, it’s been a whole weekend.”
“Jessie.” My mother groaned. “If you don’t stop, I’m going to get out and walk.”
“No need,” I muttered. “We’re here.”
My heart fluttered out of rhythm as we pulled into the medical center’s parking lot. I hated this place with its clean walls covered in swirling beige and maroon wallpaper. I hated its cheery TV music with its looping tips for healthy living. And I especially hated waiting for almost an hour in the lobby then going back to the little waiting rooms and waiting for yet another half hour before the doctor even showed up.
“Jade,” I unzipped her backpack as we waited for my mom to get checked in at the desk, “would you like your coloring book?”
She shook her head, still studying her picture book as though it contained the secrets of the universe.
“What is that?” I peeked at the cover. LaRissa is The Fairy Princess. It showed a little girl up on a stage in a princess costume with a spotlight shining down on her from above. She was holding a microphone.
My mom sat down next to me with a clipboard. “It’s nice to see you, by the way. I feel like I’ve barely had a sighting of you in the last few weeks.”
“Sorry about that.” I grimaced. “Sam gave me a used copy of a textbook I’ll need for one of my first classes for the master’s program. I’ve been studying.”
“I know.” She sat back against the headrest and sighed a little.
“Okay, what does that mean?”
She kept her eyes on the clipboard. “What does what mean?”
“That sigh.”
“Oh, nothing. I was just…” She sighed again and put the clipboard down. “Okay, you want to know what’s bothering me?”
“I do, or I wouldn’t have asked.” Though I was kind of regretting that now.
“Honey, if you would just slow down for five minutes and talk to someone now and then, you could have a little fun sometimes instead of studying all the time.”
“I talk to people. I went to that teacher’s get-together at the bar.”
“And how much of that did you spend with Madison and whatever random guy she found for you to sit next to?”
I burst out laughing so loudly a few of the other people in the waiting room sent me glances. “Are we that predictable?”
“What about that cute teacher at your work? I’ve seen him eyeing you every time we go to any of your staff functions.”
Because I wasn’t feeling uncool enough already. My mom had to remind me that I took my parents to staff functions because I hadn’t been on a real date since college.
“Sam is the one who gave me the textbook. He thinks it’s important to get this degree.” I smirked slightly. “He got the same master’s as I want, and he’s working on his doctorate.”
“Hun, look.” My mom sighed and looked up at the ceiling. “I’m not going to tell you what you have to do. You’re twenty-three and too old for that. But…I just want to see you stepping out of your safe space every now and then, that’s all.”
“Mom, I’m happy with my life. I work hard, but I’m helping people. I’m helping my students. I help you and Dad. Right now, I get to hang out with Jade.” I paused to grin at her, but she ignored me, still entranced with her book. “Why are people so obsessed with changing that? I like to be needed. I want to be needed.”
Before my mother could respond, the nurse called us back. And to my shock, the doctor was waiting for us when we got there.
“This is five-star service,” Mom said as I helped Jade get seated. The nurse immediately began taking my mother’s vitals. But I didn’t need to worry about that. Because nurses always did that, no matter which doctor you were at.
Right?
The doctor shrugged. “Well, the patient before you canceled, so I thought I’d try to get this done quickly so you can be on your way.”
“Were the tests all okay?” I asked, unable to contain myself. Was this it? The beginning of another roller coaster where my father and I watched my mother battle for her life? Should I run out of the room now to have just a few more minutes of blissful ignorance? My hands were slick with sweat, and the room seemed suddenly far too sma
ll for my taste.
He gave me a patient smile, his white, bushy mustache moving slightly against his dark skin as he grinned. “Nothing to be alarmed about. It’s just that there was a slight irregularity on one of the tests.”
“What kind of irregularity?” my mother asked. Her voice sounded far more stable than mine.
“I’m not sure. In fact, I’m confident that it’s nothing you need to worry about. I just want to make sure.”
The floor beneath me threatened to tilt, but before it got too off-kilter, Jade tugged on my sleeve. I looked down, wanting nothing more than to throw up. But I did my best to smile when I found her big eyes searching mine.
“I want to do this.”
I tried to focus on what she was pointing at while keeping an ear open to hear what the doctor was telling my mom.
“Dance?” I asked.
“No.” She frowned for a second before pointing to the stage. “This.”
Still trying to listen in on the doctor’s conversation, it was a moment before what she was saying clicked.
“You want to sing?” I paused. “On stage?”
She nodded enthusiastically. “The Candy Choir.”
“Oh.” I looked down at the page again, my heart falling. The Candy Choir was a private choir run by a few of the parents of students at our school for girls in the lower elementary grades. Jade was the perfect age, but there were requirements. First, you had to be willing to spend quite a bit of money for matching costumes and such, something I knew wouldn’t be a problem for the Allens. Unfortunately, however, the girls were also required to try out for the positions, and to do that, they had to be able to read the lyrics in their little song booklets. And while Jade’s memorization skills were actually above the levels of several of her peers, her reading was an area of constant struggle.
“Why don’t you ask your mom?” I asked lamely, hoping to shift the responsibility to someone else.
My Little Rock Airman Page 8