Homecoming in November (The Calendar Girls Book 3) (22 page)

That shook me. “Why?”

He shrugged. “She says she just wants to hold your hand and sit with you for a while. It means a lot to her. I know it’s unusual, but I’ve already told you. My mom’s an odd one at times. If it makes you uncomfortable, I’ll tell her no.”

“No. That’s not necessary. If it will make her happy, I’ll sit with her. Go on. I’ll be fine.”

He bent and kissed me again. Again, on the cheek. I guess the priest made him uncomfortable. “Thanks. I’ll be in the hall if you need me.”

I laughed. “I’ll be fine, Iggy. Go.”

Father Baucus left first, with Iggy dragging his heels, studying us before pulling the door closed. Alone with Mrs. Zemski, I gave her fingers a gentle squeeze to let her know she had her wish. To my surprise, she withdrew her hand from mine, removed her mask, and muttered in that same raspy tone, “Good. Now you and I will talk.”

I nearly fell out of the chair. “Iggy said you didn’t speak English.”

“I know how. I just don’t like it. Ugly language. Not like Polish. My children must think I am idiot to live here fifty years and never learn the language. You will keep my secret, yes? They don’t need to know. ”

I nodded, too stunned to make words in my ugly language.

“Good. I saw you on TV, you know. Heard what they say about you.”

“It’s not true,” I replied. Funny. I’d never before leaped to my own defense so quickly.

“I know.” She struggled to set the oxygen cup near her face, breathed deeply, and set it aside. “You tell me the story. Tell me everything. I listen. Then I talk. You listen. Okay?”

“Okay.” I resettled the oxygen for her and proceeded to tell her all of my story: how I met David, how we fell in love, how we drifted apart, how he hired a drug addict one night to murder him and make it look like a carjacking gone bad, and the fallout when the addict was arrested and went to trial. I told her how I’d fallen for Cole Abrams’s lies and how he’d used my naiveté to destroy my credibility in my hometown. I confessed how close to bankruptcy I’d come when my business dried up and how Dom convinced me to come here, to make a new start, and how I’d met her son. Through it all, she nodded, her gaze pinned to my face. Occasionally, her eyes would soften. Other times, they glinted with hardened steel.

When I finished, she reached for the band around her cheek again, and I helped her remove the mask. “Thank you. I know it was hard for you. But I had to know. My Ignatz is a good man. He fought in the war, yes, but he’s been fighting a war inside his heart since he came home. Until you. Now, he is happy. He smiles. He laughs. I couldn’t leave him when he was so shattered. But now, he will have you. I can go.”

“Go where?”

She flitted her fingers from the bedsheet into the air, sucked in some oxygen, all the while giving me a disapproving mother kind of look. “You know where. It’s time. I’m ready.”

“Now, Mrs. Zemski, don’t say that. Your doctor says you’ll be home before Thanksgiving. And you’ll spend the holiday with Iggy and Irenka and your grandchildren…”

She shook her head. “No. I’m leaving tonight. Tomasz has been coming to me when I sleep. He says it’s time. He’s waiting for me.”

“Tomasz?”

“My husband. I miss him. It’s been seventeen years. I have to go. You promise to take care of Ignatz for me? He’s a good man with a solid heart. He lost a few pieces in that war. You’ll help him heal. Make new pieces. You’ll take care of him. Love him. Yes?”

I refastened her oxygen mask and nodded. Honestly, what else could I say? “Yes.”

She took my hand, squeezed, and closed her eyes. I sat in the dim room at the woman’s bedside for several more minutes, waiting for her to say more, but she simply drifted into sleep. Tears welled in my eyes, and I blinked them back. At last, I slowly released her grip on me, stood on shaky legs, and took a shuddering breath. When I was certain I could pass Iggy’s close inspection, I pasted a smile on my face and opened the door to three openly curious faces.

I pressed a finger to my lips. “She’s asleep.”

They all took a step back and their expressions relaxed. Iggy wrapped an arm around my waist and walked with me past the nurse’s station, down the hall to the bank of elevators. “You okay?”

“Uh-huh,” I lied with a feigned cocky smile. “She watched me for a while. I think she just wanted to gauge who I was to you. Make sure I was good enough for her son.”

He swept me into his arms and kissed me with all the passion he’d hidden from the priest. “You’re who I’ve waited for, Jayne. I look at you, and this broken man is whole. You’re the woman meant to give my life meaning.”

“And peace,” I reminded him.

I also had to remind myself. If Mrs. Zemski was right, he’d need me to give him peace before the morning came.

Terri

I found an easy comfort with Gary from that night on. He never said I told you so, never threw Max in my face. We simply moved on, business as usual—with one minor improvement. The man kissed me clueless on a regular basis. I’m pretty sure the staff knew our relationship had shifted. Everyone wore a brighter smile and walked around with a bounce in their step. I couldn’t speak for everyone else, but it definitely made the kitchen hotter whenever I walked in there to talk to him.

On the ride home that fateful night, Gary and I agreed to take this new dynamic between us slow. I was too newly sober and too vulnerable—as evidenced by my stupidity with Max Trayham.

Speaking of which, when I closed up one day the following week, I came upon Max loitering outside the back door.

“Go away,” I told him as I stomped to my car in the rear parking lot. “I have nothing to say to you. Find yourself a new sober buddy.”

“Aw, Terri, don’t be like that, sweetheart.”

I whirled to blast him with all my righteous rage. “I am
not
your sweetheart! We’re not even friends anymore, you get me? Go back to Hollywood with your Mr. Blackstone—”

“Brownstone.”

“Like it matters. You tried to give me heroin. Heroin! I don’t know about you, Max, but I’m taking my sobriety seriously. I don’t want to screw up and become the town drunk with my face planted in the azalea bush again. Those days are behind me. I’ve worked too hard, and I’ve got too much good stuff to look forward to. I won’t risk it for a moment’s weakness, and you should have known that. You should be feeling the same way. Instead, you tried to push heroin on me!”

“I didn’t push anything on you,” he retorted. “No one tied you down and forced you to partake. I offered; you said no. No big deal. Don’t be so dramatic.”

“It was a big deal to me. And worse, when I texted a friend for help because I was afraid, you threw my phone out the window.”

“And I’m here to make amends for that. Come on. I’ll buy you a new phone right now. Where do you want to go?”

“Nowhere with you. You can’t buy me, Max. I’m done. I’ll get my own phone.”

His flawless complexion mottled into ugly purple and pink spots. “Who do you think you are? You’re a
nobody
. I could buy up this whole stupid town, including you. You think you’re something special? There are thousands of fat, drooling fans like you everywhere I go. And out of all of them, I picked you. A dozen losers in that meeting room, and I thought to myself, ‘She’s the one I can tolerate.’ I guess I was wrong. You’re just a dull, stupid cow like all the rest, stomping in your dull, stupid field, chewing on your cud, and one day, when you look back on your life, you’ll realize you didn’t do squat because you were too scared, too stupid, too boring. Good luck with that staying sober gig, sweetcheeks. I guarantee you’ll be drowning in a vodka bottle before the month is over.”

I told myself he was bitter and angry—a dry drunk, Gary would say—but the insults still stung. Tears clouded my vision as I fumbled with my keys to unlock the car door. I took a shaky inhale to steady my nerves, hit the fob button, and heard the satisfying click of all the locks disengaging. I staggered into the driver’s seat, my trembling hands gripping the steering wheel until my knuckles whitened. Through the rear windshield, I watched Max climb into his limo, and the red glow of taillights illuminated my car interior as he left the parking lot.

My tears threatened to stream down my cheeks, and I sniffed them back while stiffening my spine. Max was a monster, some kind of spoiled addict who wasn’t happy to simply ruin himself. He needed to take others down with him.

An urge to call Gary, to cling to the one person I believed might understand my fears, swept over me. I stiffened my shoulders and clutched my medallion until the feeling passed. I did not want to become dependent on anyone else for my sobriety. Or for anything else.

In that respect, Max had done me a favor. One of my counselors used to say that recovery was an act of selfishness, a time when we should look inward for what we needed and explore our feelings, wants, and fears. What that meant to me was that I had to confront my issues on my own—without a big, strong man or a big, strong drink. I could do this.

Reinforced in mind and spirit, I left the shop, headed for the local cellular dealer. Max got something else right. I needed a new phone—not to call anyone for support, but for my own convenience.

After that, with luck, I could make the six o’clock meeting in Bridgehampton.

♥♥♥♥

Jayne

The doorbell rang at seven the next morning. I’d been awake most of the night, waiting and dreading, hoping I was wrong. But I had some experience in this area. When a pet sensed its time had come, the normal light of life dimmed from its eyes, replaced with an expression of sad acceptance. And while I hated to compare Iggy’s mother to an animal, the similarities were hard to ignore.

“Iggy?” He stood on my porch, stooped and haggard.

“Mom passed away around midnight.”

The simple words and ragged tone destroyed any sliver of hope I’d clung to. I wrapped my arms around him, and he stumbled inside. My heart cracked for him. Mrs. Zemski was an unforgettable woman. I had noticed her spark in our first meeting, a spark missing yesterday. Her loss would leave an indelible mark on her friends and family. “Oh, Iggy, I’m sorry.”

And I was. Death was never easy, but while her kids had loitered in the hospital hallway, planning to celebrate Thanksgiving with her, Mrs. Zemski had pretty much willed herself to die. I think she knew she was sick for a while, but refused to go to a doctor for such a long time to hasten the process.

“Yeah. Thanks.” His gaze scanned my ceiling before steadying on me. “Umm…don’t take this the wrong way, but did anything happen when you were in the room with her yesterday?”

The wind left my lungs as if he’d punched me. My stomach pitched on a sudden sea of queasiness. “Like what?”

“I don’t know. You were in there with her for a while. It’s just strange, you know? She was doing so well. And then, hours after you left, her condition deteriorated.”

Memories rushed around my brain, whipped into a frenzy at Iggy’s words.
It’s just odd that she wouldn’t know what David planned. After all, she was his wife. She had to be in on it. She had to know something.
My skin grew clammy. My heart pounded, and my pulse rate sped up.

“I wondered if you might have noticed any changes in her condition,” Iggy said. “Something we could’ve missed? Did her color look off to you? Did she seem subdued or in pain at all? I just can’t figure it out. Dr. Humphrey thinks maybe it was an embolism or something. He says, often, there are no signs beforehand. I thought, maybe, you being a doctor, and like I said, you were alone with her…”

Why didn’t she notice anything? A man is that desperate, there ought to be signs. Sleeplessness, bill collectors calling…something. She should’ve seen something. She had to be in on it.

With my legs shaking so hard my knees buckled, I sank onto the couch, hugging myself to keep the shivers at bay. “Is that what you’re really asking me?”

“Of course. What else would I be asking?”

The words spilled from my lips, bitter and heated. “Are you sure you’re not wondering if I somehow tampered with her I.V., or slipped some poison into her water pitcher? After all, I was ‘alone with her for such a long time.’”

“Jayne.” He knelt in front of me and clasped my hand. “Don’t. Don’t go back there. I’m not accusing you of anything. Please. Come on. Stay with me. I need you now.”

His plea pulled me back to the present, reminding of my promise to his mother to take care of him. I shook myself, shedding the past the way a dog sheds water, and took a deep breath.

But I’d made another promise to her, as well. That one, I would have to break. No secrets. After all David had put me through, I wouldn’t begin a relationship with Iggy while a secret hung between us. No matter how inconsequential that secret might be.

“Your mom could speak English,” I blurted. “We talked yesterday. That’s why I was in her room for so long. She wanted to know my story. And I told her. I told her all of it. She listened and she believed me. I think…” I swallowed. “I think she wanted to make sure I would take care of you when she no longer could. She didn’t want you to be alone once she died.”

He sat next to me, his eyes wide with shock. “Wait. Back up. What are you saying? That you and she talked? That my mom
talked
to you? You held a conversation? In English?”

I nodded.

“Why didn’t she ever tell me? Or Irenka?”

“She said it served you right for thinking she was an idiot who couldn’t pick up a language after fifty years. And besides, English is an ugly language. She said she preferred Polish.”

He smiled—a real, genuine Iggy smile that soon evolved into deep, satisfied chuckles. He turned his gaze to the ceiling again, “Oh, Mom, you must be having a real good laugh at my expense right now.”

I waited until he’d composed himself again before I told him the rest. “She said she was ready, Iggy. She wanted to be with her husband again.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this yesterday?”

“I couldn’t.”

“You should have!”

“How? She didn’t want you to know we’d talked at all. How creepy would it have been…” My throat constricted, and tears filled my eyes. “…for me to walk out of her room and tell you and your sister I had a feeling your mother wouldn’t make it through the night? Like some kind of Grim Reaper representative? Or worse…”

Unable to continue, I sobbed. I cried for Iggy, for his sister, for the love they’d lost upon the death of their mother. And I’m sorry to admit I was selfish enough to cry for myself, for all that I’d lost upon David’s death. Nowadays, I constantly worried people would suspect me of ulterior motives and name me as the number one suspect in any transgression. 

“Or worse, that you’d tampered with her I.V. or slipped poison into her water pitcher,” he repeated for me.

I nodded.

He wrapped an arm around me, pulled me up against him, shielding me, holding me. “I wish I could take those doubts from you. I realize why it’s where your mind goes. It’s your PTSD—just like when a car muffler backfires or sirens shriek behind me, I automatically reach for my weapon. If I happen to hear them in the middle of the night, I wake up screaming—a sound you’re familiar with. In your case, any death that occurs near you is going to make you think you’re somehow responsible. But, Jayne, I would
never
think you capable of murder. You’re someone I’ve come to admire for your compassion, your capacity for forgiveness, and the inordinate amount of love you have to offer.”

I shook my head. “You know it’s gonna come up,” I murmured against his chest. “Someone’s going to make the connection that I was the last person to see her before she died and say, ‘Hey, isn’t she the woman whose husband died and they suspected she had something to do with it? I bet she did something to kill the old lady, too.’”

“No, they won’t. Because it’s not true. I was in with her after you left. So was Irenka. And her doctor, several nurses, our neighbors, the priest. You were hardly the last person to see her or have contact with her. She was in no distress, and she passed quietly in the night. I guess she wanted to be sure she went on her own terms. That was Mom, stubborn right to the end.”

“I really didn’t think she’d pass away overnight. Her doctor said she was going home. You all thought she was going home. Just because she said she was ready to move on didn’t mean she was right.”

“Hmmph. Nobody disagreed with my mother. Not even her doctors.”

The tears slipped from my eyes to roll down my cheeks. “I’m sorry, Iggy. I’m so sorry.”

He placed my head on his shoulder and ran his hand over my hair. “Don’t be. Knowing she wanted to go makes it easier to bear somehow. What exactly did she tell you?”

I sat up and gave him the rundown on our conversation, taking special care to mention all the good she had to say about him and how much she’d loved him. When I finished, I squeezed his hand. “I’m here for you, Iggy. For as long as you need me.”

“I’ll always need you.”

To confirm his declaration, he captured my lips with his. His kiss was fierce, demanding. I demanded right back, as if we’d both concluded the time for subtlety and timidity had long gone. He sought affirmation of life, having just lost someone dear to him. I sought affirmation life could still have passion, and all the mess of emotions that went along with it. We clung to each other, our bodies fused in a connection of need and desire.

I broke the kiss and stared at this man who’d rescued me from a half-life of hiding and nursing old wounds. “Let’s go upstairs,” I murmured against his cheek.

This time, it was his turn to say, “Okay.”