A Moment of Weakness (6 page)

Jade could manage only a slight shake of her head as her eyes grew watery again.

He thought back to that afternoon on his front lawn, the day Jade said good-bye. It was all coming clearer now. “You were going to meet your mama in Kelso.” He was transfixed, trapped in her gaze, carried back to the spring of his twelfth year. “You were supposed to come back when summer ended.”

A wall went up in Jade’s eyes and she stiffened. “We ended up staying.”

“But why? What happened?”

She stared at her hands, and he had the strong sense that
she was wrestling with something. Finally she sighed. “Mama never came back.”

“She didn’t?” Tanner frowned. “Where did she—”

“I don’t know. Daddy still won’t talk about it.” Jade kept her eyes trained on her hands, and Tanner saw they were trembling. “I used to think she got killed in a car accident somewhere between Virginia and Washington.”

“And now?”

“I found a letter from her a year after we moved, postmarked D.C.” Jade’s expression was hard and Tanner realized the years must have been difficult for her. “She told Daddy to tell me she was sorry. That kind of thing.”

The truth about what she was saying hit Tanner like a truck. Jade’s mother had walked out on her with no intention whatsoever of coming back. No wonder Jade never moved back to Virginia. His heart broke for her, and he pulled her close again, stroking the back of her head as if she were still the ten-year-old girl he had grown up with. “I’m sorry, Jade.”

She remained stiff and although she allowed him to comfort her, Tanner could tell she wasn’t crying.

“Have you heard from her since then?”

“No. It doesn’t matter. She’s dead as far as I’m concerned.”

Tanner got the point. The topic was closed. He pulled away again, this time completely. He had so much to tell her, so many years to make up for, but he didn’t want her to feel like he was prying. He leaned back against her car so they were standing side by side.

“How old are you, anyway, Jade? Twenty, twenty-one?”

She smiled, and Tanner could see she was glad he’d changed the subject. “Twenty-one. And you’re twenty-three.” She studied him for a moment. “So … if you’re an intern I guess you’re staying in town?”

“Rented an apartment for the summer. Furnished. And one of the supervisors lent me a car. The internship lasts through August.”

Jade cocked her head. “Where’s Princeton, anyway?”

“New Jersey.”

“Hmm.” Jade hugged herself and looked away. “You like it?”

“It’s all right.” Tanner didn’t want to talk about Princeton and politics and his well-planned future. “So what’s it been? Twelve years?”

“Eleven, I think. A lot’s happened since then.”

Tanner gazed at the treetops behind city hall for a moment then back at Jade. “I thought about you all the time after you left, wondering what happened to you.”

Jade hugged herself tighter. “The minute I saw you I thought … I thought you looked like my old friend, Tanner. The way I imagined you might look grown up.”

Tanner watched her, how she brushed her hair back from her face and tilted her head just so. He was mesmerized by her, taken aback by the fact that his long lost friend wasn’t a little girl anymore. She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on.

“Let’s go somewhere. Talk, catch up.” Tanner reached for her hand, but she pulled it back and again her eyes found something on the ground. He searched her face, but her troubled expression did nothing to explain her actions. Then it dawned on him … “I’m sorry … I didn’t even ask. Are you married, Jade? Is there someone waiting for you?”

She viewed him through cautious eyes. “No. I just … people will talk. I like to keep my distance.”

Tanner hesitated. “Okay. Sorry about the hand thing.”

A slight grin appeared, and some of the caution in Jade’s eyes faded. “Forgiven.” She stared at him a moment. “I’m sorry for overreacting.”

“No problem.” Tanner was surprised at how he ached to take her in his arms and kiss her. From the time he was in high school he could have had his pick of beautiful women. They left notes on his car, messages at his dorm, and propositioned him to his face. He wasn’t interested. He trusted God’s plan for his life, and part of that plan was being sexually pure until he was married. Despite the women who sought after him, holding to that conviction had never been a struggle.

Yet none of them had ever made him feel the way he felt now, standing on a city sidewalk, Jade Conner filling his senses.

Tanner had a feeling that whatever wounds Jade’s mother had inflicted on her daughter’s heart, they had left her scarred. He would have to move slowly if they were going to be friends again. “Wanna get something to eat?”

She nodded. “I know a great hamburger place.”

He patted her car. “You driving?”

Her eyes twinkled. “If you trust a girl who can beat you in a bike race.”

Tanner didn’t smile. The emotions she stirred in him were too deep to make light of. “The question isn’t whether I trust you.” His voice was softer, his face less than a foot from hers. “It’s whether you trust me.”

Jade said nothing, just considered his statement, meeting his gaze while a dozen emotions danced in her eyes. Finally she caught his neck with the crook of her arm and hugged him close. His arms circled her again, and he clung to her the way a brother might cling to a long lost sister.

He held her that way for nearly a minute all the while praying that she wouldn’t see the truth. How the feelings that assaulted him now were far from brotherly.

I
F TRAIN TRACKS HAD RUN THROUGH THE TOWN OF
K
ELSO, THE
house where Jade and her father lived would have been on the wrong side.

Their two-bedroom rental was sandwiched between a cluster of miscellaneous mobile homes and a weed-infested trailer park on Stark Street. The city dump was within eyesight, and a bitter stench drifted down the roadway whenever a breeze kicked up. What with the rusted washing machines and broken-down automobiles cluttering the yards up and down Stark, it was difficult to tell where the dump ended and the neighborhood began.

Crime had never been much of an issue in Kelso. A sleepy town that survived on industry along the Columbia and Cowlitz rivers, most of the people who lived there had done so all their lives. Still, when there was a domestic incident or a drug bust, inevitably it was on or near Stark Street.

Jade was used to her neighborhood. That night when she pulled into her driveway and stepped around broken engine parts and a Mustang that had died five years earlier, she didn’t give a second thought to the condition of her home.

She had found Tanner Eastman. After ten years of sorrow and struggle she had come face to face with the one who had been a single ray of light in an otherwise cavernously dark past. Somehow, someway, despite the years gone by, he had found her, and she desperately needed to talk to someone about what she was feeling.

Jade opened the front door. “Dad?” It was Monday night, and if there’d been enough work at the garage to keep him past noon, he would have worked the whole day. In that case, he would probably still be sober enough to talk.

There was a crash in the kitchen, and Jade followed the sound. The cracked kitchen countertop was covered with a dozen empty beer bottles, the mangled remains of five fried chicken parts, and congealed pools of spilled gravy. Her father was leaning against the refrigerator, swaying slightly and standing in a pool of beer and broken glass.

He saw Jade and scowled. “Don’t jus’ stan’ there!” He glared at her with bloodshot eyes. “Clean it up!”

Jade sighed. “Daddy, why do you have to do this?” She set down her purse and stooped to pick up the larger pieces of glass. “Did you cut your foot?”

“Footz fine. Hurry up. You think I like bein’ stuck here?”

For as long as they’d lived in Kelso, Jade had had two fathers. One, a quiet, hard-working man who was humbly apologetic to her for his ineptitude at knowing what it took to raise a little girl. The other … the other stood before her now. A belligerent, drunken, miserable man who took out his frustration with life on Jade because she was the only one around.

Mornings were the best. He would wake up groggy and pained from the hangover, and his voice, his eyes, his entire countenance would be different.

“Jade, baby, could you be a doll and pick up some milk when you’re out today?” he would say on his way out the door. Sometimes he’d search for her and hug her. Occasionally he would apologize for the night before. Always he wore regret in his eyes and the haunting shades of failure.

Jade took a rag and began cleaning the floor as her father stepped unsteadily around her and wiped his wet feet on the
threadbare carpet. She was still picking up broken glass as he shuffled to his easy chair. She would never understand how he managed to hold a job at the garage, fixing cars and making enough money to get by, when he went to work each day ravaged by the effects of another hard-drinking night.

She could hear him pop the top on another bottle. “Where ya been?” He didn’t talk when he was drunk, he barked. His voice was abrasive, short tempered, and full of accusation.

The glass was cleaned up, and Jade ran the cloth once more over the floor, hating the way it made her hands smell like beer. “I ran into an old friend, someone from Virginia.”

Her father was used to holding conversations in a drunken state. He thought over Jade’s comment and then bellowed. “What friend?”

Jade wiped her hands on a towel and took a spot on the sofa across from her father. “Tanner Eastman. Remember him?”

Her father belched loudly. “Eastman … Eastman. Oh, yeah. Snobby folks across the street.”

Jade noticed the gravy stains on her father’s undershirt and the chicken crumbs scattered on the floor around him. She wondered what he would think come morning if he could see how he looked now. “Tanner wasn’t a snob. He and I used to play together.”

“You did?”

“Yes.” Where had her father thought she was all those hours she spent away from home?
He didn’t care then, and he doesn’t care now
.

“I don’t remember it.”

“It’s true, Dad. Until we moved he was my best friend.”

“Whas he doin’ here?”

“An internship for the university he attends.”

Her father scowled. “Told ya he was a snob.” He raised his
bottle and took a long swig. “Ahhhh. What about ol’ Jim Rudolph? Whatever happened to him?”

“I’m not talking about Jim, Daddy.”

Her father raised part way out of his chair in a threatening motion. “Don’ get smart with me, y’ng lady. You might be grown up but you still haffa show a little respect.”

Jade stared at her hands. Why did she bother?

Her father plopped back into his chair. “Don’t get your hopes up, Jade.”

“What?”

“That Eastman’s a snob. ‘S too good for trash like you an’ me.”

Jade stood to leave. She’d had enough of her father’s encouragement for one night. “Tanner’s my friend. We had a nice dinner and caught up on our lives.” She paused and felt the sting of tears. “And don’t worry, I don’t have any hopes about him.”

“That’s good. Jim Rudolph wouldn’t like it if you took up with ’nother man.”

A pit formed in Jade’s stomach. Why must her father persist with talk about Jim? Hadn’t she made herself clear?

“Daddy, I don’t love Jim. I don’t even like him. He asked me to marry him, and I turned him down, remember?”

Her father scratched his armpit and stared at a wrestling match on TV. “You’re an idiot, Jade.”

Her heart deflated like a two-week-old balloon. “I am not an idiot.” There was no point carrying on a conversation with her father when he had been drinking, but sometimes Jade couldn’t help herself. Most nights, these were the only conversations they had.

He faced her again and raised his voice another notch. “You’re an idiot! Jim comes from good, hard-workin’ family.
He’s gonna be a teacher, and you turned him down. I said it before and I’ll say it again—” he took another swig and finished the bottle—“Jim Rudolph’s the bes’ thing ever happened to you, Jade.” He tried to focus on her, but his head bobbed unsteadily, and he finally gave up and turned back to the match. “You shoulda married him. No one else’ll ever want you.”

Jade felt her shoulders slump. Every time she let herself get sucked into a discussion like this one she wondered the same thing: Was it the beer, or did her father really hate her?

He belched again. “Get me ’nother beer, will ya?”

Jade stared at her father. Most of the time she did as he asked, but this time he could get it himself. Maybe break another bottle in the process. She needed fresh air before she let go and threw something at him.

She exhaled through tightly clenched teeth and spun around. She was already outside when she heard him stumbling toward the kitchen. Apparently he’d forgotten about her. Jade breathed a heavy sigh. The air was warm and damp, hovering like a blanket against Jade’s skin.

The covered porch was the best part of the house. It ran along the entire front and was deep enough to find shelter even when wind drove the Northwest rain sideways. Jade had read hundreds of books on this porch, spent years here dreaming about a different life.

When she was a little girl, she had considered running away, moving in with somebody else’s family where there would be a mom and a dad and dinner hours and laughter. But over time she had learned to fend for herself, avoiding her father when he was drinking and escaping to imaginary worlds on the front porch.

Jade wandered across the creaking boards. The porch was
cluttered, of course, like everything else about their house. Jade would have loved to clean it up, to throw out the junk. But her father had collected most of it from his years as a mechanic. Parts that could be fixed and sold if he ever found the time, engines he could repair and use again if only he’d had a sober evening in which to work.

She spotted a cardboard box marked Starters and Ignition Switches. It had been there for at least five years, and Jade had used it as a chair so often it felt almost normal to do so. She pushed it out so she could see the dusky sky. Her heart felt bruised from her father’s comments, and Jade thought about the irony. Men were easily struck by her looks, but the most important part, the place where her heart and soul lived, was battered beyond recognition. Her father was right. Why would anyone else want her?