2 On the Nickel (16 page)

Guilt stabbed my heart. Mama
didn’t get like this overnight. Why hadn’t I noticed the heavy load she
carried? I should have noticed her torment before it broke her. I bit my lip in
dismay.

“What is it, Mama?” I asked, my
heart in my mouth. “What could be so terrible?”

I hung there, suspended in that
miserable, aching silence. Mama’s anguish and longing crowded out my thoughts,
overwhelming all but my autonomic body functions. Warmth drained from my core.

“Joe.” Mama’s breath caught on a
sob. “She wanted my Joe.” She burst into heart-wrenching sobs, cradling her
head in her hands.

I recoiled. I’d done it now. I’d
opened Pandora’s box. Predictably, furies poured out and wreaked havoc. “Daddy?
She wanted Daddy?”

Chapter 10

My world reeled. I clung to the kitchen table because if I
didn’t, I would surely slide into the darkest hole of my life and never see
daylight again. Everything I valued about honesty and reputation and integrity,
it all came from Daddy.

I had his green eyes, his fiery
red hair. I had his uncanny aptitude for accounting and his dogged determination
to endure in the face of trouble. He’d been a rock through every storm of my
life. We’d worked and played together. He’d devoted his life to me, to Mama. Erica Hodges had no place in that world. No way. I’d have known.

Mama’s pathos drew me out of my reflections. This wasn’t about me or my childhood. This was very much about my
mother. “It’s okay, Mama. It’s okay.” I went to her, wrapping her in my arms,
holding her tight. We huddled together, mother and daughter, and I cried with
her.

I smoothed her curly white hair
away from her face and patted her back until she quieted.

“I am so ashamed.” Mama’s ragged voice held no hope. “I’m so ashamed.”

Snapshots of the past swirled
through my mind like a video montage on fast forward. Mama and Daddy. Mama and Erica.
Daddy’s funeral. Daddy’s willing the house to me. Everyone, including me, thinking that was odd. Why had he done that? Did he know something was amiss in Mama’s life
back then?

What else was Mama concealing?

I needed to know.

I dreaded knowing.

Terror weighed heavily on my
chest, pushing the air from my lungs, making me fight for every breath. I
couldn’t do this standing in the kitchen, not after the gym workout I’d
endured. “Come on, Mama. Let’s go sit in the living room.”

Mama sank onto the sofa, and I
joined her with a sigh of relief. I wiped the tears from my cheeks with the
back of my hand. Sunshine streamed through the side window, creating a pool of
light on the wood floor. I was glad for the light and the warmth. Just what I
needed to combat the cold hard truth of life.

It was time for secrets to be
revealed. “Whatever it is, we can deal with it,” I said. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

“I can’t. You’re going to hate me.”

“You’re my mother. I won’t hate
you.”

Mama found a tissue in her robe
pocket and used it. She plucked a stray dog hair off her sleeve. Her lower lip
trembled.

“Tell me, Mama. Please.”

She groaned in misery. The inner
corners of her eyebrows lowered, while her nose wrinkled. Her hand went to her
throat. She glanced everywhere but at me. Finally she whispered, “I had an
affair. I cheated on your father.”

I blinked. Then I blinked some more as the foundations of my world tilted. I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it. “Someone else is my father?”

Her head snapped back into the
sofa cushions. “Don’t be absurd. Joe’s your father. You’re the spitting image
of him and everyone knows it. Thank God for that thick red hair of yours.”

My red mop was nearly
unmanageable, which is why I clipped it up and out of the way. I’d never once
thought of it as an asset. Now I was thrilled to share this physical trait with
my father.

“This is so hard.” Mama sighed. “You’d
think it would be easy to confess and get it over with, but the truth is, my
behavior sounds so callous. First, you have to understand that I loved your
father with all my heart. I loved him from the first moment I laid eyes on him
until his dying day. I love him and miss him and wish he was still a part of my
daily life.”

Madonna lumbered into the living
room. She rested her head in my lap and drooled on me. I patted her head
absently, my attention one hundred percent focused on my mother. I was afraid
of what came next, and I hated how much I needed to know.

“I don’t understand, Mama. How
could you love Daddy and cheat on him?”

Mama drew in a shaky, deep
breath. “You remember I had an older sister?” At my nod, she continued. “Ruth
died when we were in high school.”

“I’ve gone with you to put
flowers on Aunt Ruth’s grave.”

A faraway look came into Mama’s eyes. “Ruthie and I were as different as night and day. While I craved
respectability, Ruthie walked on the wild side. We grew up across the mountain,
over in Metter, but we were bused to Hogan’s Glen for school. We had nothing,
Ruthie and I. Both of us wanted out of poverty, but we took different roads.
She used her body to attract attention, and she ended up pregnant.”

“Pregnant? Aunt Ruth had a baby?”

“Ruthie died during childbirth.
My mama said the baby died, too.”

“What does Aunt Ruth have to do
with your affair?” Horrible thoughts raced through my head. Had Aunt Ruth been
pregnant by Daddy? “Don’t stop now.”

“Ruthie was a high school senior,
and I was a junior when she died,” Mama said. “I missed her so much that I
couldn’t stand going to school. When my math teacher arranged for another student
to tutor me to bring my grades up, I came this close to not doing it.” She
pinched her fingers close together. “The only reason I followed through was
that I’d always had a crush on this particular boy.”

I stroked Madonna’s broad head
and tried to imagine Mama in high school. We had no pictures of her at that time. Her pictorial history began when she married Daddy. There were no photos of her mother or of
Aunt Ruth, either.

Personalities didn’t change. Mama
would have been outspoken and obstinate back then. Petite and loaded with
vitality and sass. Dark curly hair with arresting brown eyes and a wicked sense
of humor. Daddy would have latched on to her and held on tight.

“Joe was Erica’s beau back then.
He was smart and hardworking and had endless patience with me. Those tutoring sessions were the only bright spot in my life. Whenever I wasn’t being
tutored or at school, I helped Mama with the wash she took in. Erica knew about
Ruthie and her wild ways. They’d been classmates, you see. Erica was furious
with Joe for tutoring me. White trash she called me, and she was right. But the
more she ragged Joe about his tutoring, the more he turned from her to me.

“Honestly, I didn’t try to lure
him away from her, but I didn’t chase him away. Joe was old Hogan’s Glen. He came from a good, decent family. I knew he could give me the life I wanted.”

“So you married Daddy,” I added,
hoping to move this story along and get to the affair.

“We got married. His parents
supported us while Joe went to college. I kept house and learned how to be
Joe’s wife. Joe was very attentive. Loving. Constant. And I was scared to death
of having marital relations with him. Every time Joe wanted to, you know, I
froze up inside.”

I did not want to hear about my
parent’s sex life. But I couldn’t help myself. “What did you do?”

Mama buried her face in her
hands. “This is the part I’m ashamed of. I assumed since I wasn’t interested in
sex, it was because Joe wasn’t exciting in that way. I found someone else, a friend of Joe’s. He was happy to pay me that kind of attention.”

Ice chilled my blood. “You
betrayed Daddy with his friend?”

“I never thought of it as a
betrayal. It was like trying on a new dress. For years Ruthie had been the wild
one. I’d never even kissed another man besides Joe. Your father was the only
reference point I had. So I found time to be with his friend.”

My stomach lurched, and I grabbed
my middle with both arms. “I don’t want to know intimate details about your
love life.”

“Good. I have no intention of
telling you. Here’s the deal. I didn’t sleep with Joe’s friend. We shared
several meals, saw a movie, and kissed exactly once. That’s all it took, you
see. I found out the problem wasn’t Joe. It was me.”

“You?”

“Me. Ruthie died from childbirth.
I realized I was terrified of becoming pregnant. Sex led to pregnancy, and in
my mind, pregnancy to death. That’s why I didn’t light up the sheets.”

“You figured that out by
yourself?”

“No. I went home to Mama after I kissed Joe’s friend. I told her I couldn’t go back to Joe because of what I’d
done. Mama was incredibly nosy—you take after her by the way—and she dragged
the whole story out of me. Then she took me home to my husband. I never told
Joe about the kiss, but I broke it off with his friend. However, the horse was
out of the barn. Someone had seen us together. Someone who knew what my
betrayal would do to Joe.”

My heart sank as the picture
clarified. “Oh, Lord. Erica knew? Erica attended the same college?”

Mama nodded, her expression sad. “Erica
was there, and she’d taken a leaf from Ruthie’s book. She assumed the best way to land a husband was through his fly. When Joe wouldn’t accommodate her, Erica
slept with William Hodges until she got herself good and pregnant. They had a
quickie marriage and ended up back in Hogan’s Glen. Erica had William but she
always wanted Joe.”

“Was William the man who kissed
you?”

“No. Thank God for that. William
and your father knew each other, but they were never friends. Your father
preferred friends who drank less, who played golf, and who shared his passion
for truth.”

Daddy had had one lifelong
friend. The horrible truth dawned on me. “Bud? Bud Flook? He was the man you
kissed?”

Mama nodded, her hands clutched
tightly in her lap. “You have to understand. I was so deeply in love with Joe,
I didn’t realize what that kiss and those few dinners meant to Bud. Not once.
Over the years, Joe ribbed Bud about his permanent bachelorhood, and Bud said
some guys weren’t meant to find happiness. Believe me, I was stunned when I
learned Bud loved me.”

The walls of the room pressed in
on me. My head pounded. “Your lawyer, the person whose sole responsibility is
to keep you out of jail, is the man you passed over all those years ago?”

Mama’s face crumpled. “I never meant to wreck Bud’s life, but I did. Now I have to make it up to him.”

I glanced over at the doorway,
wishing I could bolt out of this room. Mama had been in a love triangle? My
mouth soured. “Rafe was right. You need a new lawyer.”

“Bud’s the only lawyer I want.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I almost died after I had you.
Bud stood by Joe through my hysterectomy. Joe wanted more children, and I
couldn’t give them to him. I was a failure as a woman.”

Mama stopped to heave in a
breath. She exhaled slowly as if it ached to part with a single molecule of
oxygen. “That’s when Erica made another huge play for Joe. Her husband was
dead, and she’d already borne two healthy children. She’d flounce over here in
the flimsiest outfits, swimming in perfume, pretending to have accounting emergencies. Her overt sexuality scared the snot out of me. I thought I would lose everything.
How could Joe resist that much temptation?”

My eyes widened and nausea
threatened. The foundations of my life shivered and shook. “Please tell me he did. Tell me that he didn’t sleep with Erica Hodges.”

“Not once. Although I worried
over it so much, I had a few lunches with my best friend and discussed it.”

Madonna nudged me to pet her again. I tried to guess what came next in this story. “Francine and Muriel? They
know about this drama?”

“Good heavens, no. Why would I
tell them about my sex life?”

“Who did you tell?”

“Bud, of course.”

My jaw dropped. “You used him a
second time?”

Mama’s face flushed bright red.
Sparks flashed through her eyes. “You don’t understand. I can talk to Bud about
anything. Always could. Still do. He loves me.”

“Bud is your best friend?”

“We’ve kept it real quiet.” She
gazed at the Oriental rug, rasped in a breath, and grabbed my arm. “Bud
proposed. He wants to marry me.”

Omigod! Too much information. I
shook off her hand. “You want to get married?” That unspoken look Mama and Bud
had shared in his car the other night made sense. It had been warm and knowing,
intimate even. How could I have missed that at the time? “You’re sleeping with
him? You cheated on Daddy after all?”

Mama’s spine stiffened. “Watch
your mouth, missy, or I’ll wash it out with soap. I never slept with Bud until
this summer. The man waited thirty-nine years for me. That’s devotion.”

My cheeks heated at the thought
of Mama sneaking around and having sex with Bud Flook. Had they done it in the
back seat of his car? I squeezed my eyes tight to ward off the image of Mama
and Bud being intimate. There had been a point to this conversation. I needed
to find it. “How does this tie into Erica’s death?”

Mama curled into herself. “Erica
took pictures of Bud and me eating lunch in Frederick about ten years ago.
She’s been blackmailing us ever since.”

Now we were getting somewhere. Ignoring my pangs of sympathy for her, I pushed forward, determined to get to the
bottom of this. “Why would you pay her a dime?”

“Because I didn’t want Joe to see
those pictures and get the wrong idea. I love your father. Always have. Always
will.”

I replayed the key facts. Mama
loved Daddy. He loved her. Bud loved Mama. She liked him as a friend. Erica
wanted Daddy but didn’t get him. It was starting to make sense. “Why would
Erica blackmail anyone? She was loaded.”

“She spent money like it was
water. She went through her fortune and her husband’s.”

Once again, Mama’s logic made sense,
to a point. “But the blackmail ended when Daddy died?”

“No. It never ended. I paid her a
thousand dollars last Tuesday.”

My heart skipped a beat. This
wasn’t ancient history. This was present-day blackmail. Worse, it spelled
motive for murder. “Where’d you get a thousand dollars?”

“I sold my car to Bud. He’s been
letting me drive it, but technically he owns my Olds.”

“Why did you keep paying her?”

“Because the truth could hurt you
and the girls. You were so fragile after your father died. I had to be strong
for you. And then Charlie took up with someone else, and you came to live with me. There never was a good time to end Erica’s chokehold on me. I didn’t want you to think poorly of me. I never wanted my granddaughters to know what I’d
done.”