Second Chances (5 page)

“Where's his car?” Justin asked.

I thumbed in the general direction of Eddie's, while Justin and I continued staring at my husband. Jillian, however, had trained her suspicious gaze upon me.

“The bastard,” she muttered then. “He tried to kiss you, didn't he?”

I squirmed and finally admitted, “He tried, but I shoved him away.”

“That effing limper,” she went on. Justin shot her an odd look, though I understood her words. “He's doing this because he's a big jealous baby, that's what. He can't handle that you found someone new.”

“Pretty much,” I agreed. I knew that's what had motivated this bullshit, more than anything.

“Well I say let him sleep right there tonight,” Justin suggested. I looked back at him; from a particular angle his livid facial scars weren't even visible, though the longer I'd been around him this summer, the less I noticed them at all. “He'll pay for it in the morning.”

“Yeah, but what if the girls find him?” Jilly asked. “Or Mom? Christ, we'd hear about it for weeks.”

I giggled a little, and then reflected, “Gran would just step over him and start the coffee.”

Jilly giggled too. “But she'd be sure to poke him with her cane a few times. Not hard, just enough to bust a rib or two.”

“Fine, he can come home with me,” Justin grumbled. “Help me load him up.”

Anyone watching would have assumed we actually were disposing of a body; Justin hooked his arms under Jackson's torso and hefted him up, while Jilly and I each snagged a leg. He was inert between us as we hauled him, haltingly, across the parking lot and then with great difficulty into the passenger seat of Justin's truck. For a moment he came to, his gaze catching hold of me, and he murmured, “Night, Jo, love you,” before his eyes rolled back in his head.

I froze for a moment, unduly troubled by that statement. Jillian slammed the door, effectively cutting off my thoughts. She said, “Come on, let's get to bed. You have a long drive tomorrow.”

And I let her lead me home.

Morning dawned thick and silver with cloud
cover. I bent over each of my girls in their beds in turn, cupping their cheeks and kissing them, assuring them that I'd call, that I'd be back soon. Before they knew it.

Jilly was the only one fully awake, bundled in her quilted pink robe, a travel mug of coffee in hand. She had brewed it for me in her kitchen, and I clung to her for a long moment under the heavy, early morning sky. She kissed me and whispered, “Bring him back.”

“I will, and I'll call every night,” I whispered against her hair.

I climbed into my loaded car, turned the key. A few drops of rain smattered over the windshield as I rolled down the window with a touch of a button and reached out to my sister. She clutched my hand extra hard for a moment. Thus fortified, I pulled from the parking lot, slowly, then around the lake and back through Landon, before turning out onto the main highway, heading for Interstate 35.

By midmorning I had cleared Minnesota and entered Iowa under a clear blue bowl of sky. I'd hauled along a carry case jammed with my favorite CDs, and was listening currently to Bon Jovi, the old stuff, the music from my youth. I kept the windows down, despite my speed, my heart unsettled by the emotions mixing together under my breastbone. Exhilaration and terror, mostly, but a ribbon of pure thrill wound through me, too, at the fact that I was doing something like this. Going after what I wanted for myself, instead of sitting by and letting life happen to me. I felt alive, in a way that I hadn't in over a decade.

Blythe, Blythe, don't be angry that I'm coming
, I thought, my breath catching a little at just the thought of my lover
. Come back with me, we'll make it work. Somehow, we'll make it work
. I couldn't bear the thought of the alternative.

The interstate hummed beneath the tires as I drove south past mile upon mile of rolling green hills and cornfields a month from harvest. Driving solo had always been something, for me, that invited reflection, and my thoughts spun back to the nights in Blythe's truck, sneaking away into the darkness to find a few hours alone. I revisited the night we'd met, playing over that moment again. I'd just arrived at Shore Leave from Chicago, kids in tow, to discover that my mother had hired an ex-con. Angry, exhausted and emotionally drained, I'd walked into the café that night expecting…well, certainly not the future love of my life.

I'd been almost too shy to shake his hand. And afterward, during those first few weeks, I'd tried so hard to ignore my feelings for him, but it had been useless, out of my hands. My initial and intense attraction had been slowly replaced by something more. The last thing on earth I'd been expecting was to fall in love. But then, that's the way of it…

I'd believed myself in love once before, totally under the spell of Jackson Gordon's smile. It still rankled me this morning that he could so casually, in last night's drunken state, speak any words of love to me. The man who'd told me just a month ago that he was in love with another woman and wanted to marry her. The man I'd fallen out of love with long ago (though it took almost equally as long to realize it), when our marriage began to wither on the vine. To be fair, when I was a teenage girl Jackson had been my ideal: charming, sexy, tan and lanky, never wearing a shirt during our long hot summers on the lake. He'd been a fan of wearing his neon-tinted sunglasses pushed back on his head, squinting into the sun, his toothy grin constantly flashing. He'd teased me all the time, untying my bikini top, slipping his hands over my stomach, always ready to make love, and in those days I had been always willing.

I bit my bottom lip now, all these years later, remembering the morning I'd realized I was pregnant and that I must tell Jackie. How abruptly our virtually carefree relationship came screeching and grinding to a halt.

“Pregnant?” he'd repeated on that spring afternoon, May 1985, roughly three weeks after our senior prom.

I nodded, my insides shaking and heaving with tension, though I'd held it together reasonably well on the outside. We'd been sitting on the arbor swing in his parent's big shady yard, alone but for the lazy spring sunlight and about a million birds, Jackie keeping the swing in motion with an idle foot. When I revealed my news, he'd stopped it with a jolt. His eyes were dark and serious on mine. But despite everything he'd taken my right hand between both of his.

“Are you sure, Jo? You did a pee test and everything?”

“Yes, and yes I'm sure,” I said, desperately willing away the ocean of frightened sobs that kept threatening to hurricane through my body. “Oh, Jackie, Mom will kill me. She'll murder me. She's warned me about this for so long.”

And he'd smiled, a little hint of his grin, and teased, “Warned you about me?”

I glared at him for trying to make a joke of it at this moment, and his grin had slipped away. He said, “Tell Ellen first, for sure. She'll help make your mom understand.”

“What about your parents?” I'd worried. They were both pretty uptight for having such a wild only child.

“We'll tell them. It'll be okay, Jo,” he'd said back then. And I'd believed him.

Our wedding was just a month and a half later, after our high school graduation, and I'd been too ill with morning sickness to do any real celebrating. Mom had been furious with me (though she hid that fact in front of anyone), Jilly heartbroken, Gran, Great-Aunt Minnie (who'd still been around in those days dishing out both fried fish and heaps of advice) and Aunt Ellen resigned. Gran had attempted on two occasions to talk me out of marrying Jackie. They were all sick at the idea of me moving all the way to Chicago, but at the time it had made sense; Jackson was already accepted into college and I could stay home with the baby. Which I did, and then again, and finally for a third time.

“Dammit, Jackson,” I murmured now, blinking behind my huge sunglasses into the bright sun of an Iowa morning, over 18 years later. Why hadn't I listened to my gran? But that was a pointless question, and besides, without having moved to Chicago I wouldn't have had either Tish or Ruthann, the lights of my life. My trio of girls was the best thing I'd ever put out into the world, and in any case, I'd always have wondered about Jackson had he gone off to college and left me behind. Better to have experienced the failure than be constantly second-guessing.

I need a smoke
, I thought, groping for my purse to find the pack Jilly had stashed there for me. I extracted one and then used the same hand to push in the car lighter.
After this trip, no more. Totally done smoking
.

I drove for another hour before pulling into a Standard station to refuel. Again I spent a moment marveling at this trip I was making, alone. Five years ago I wouldn't have considered such a thing. Even six months ago. But Jackson had been right when he'd noticed how I had changed this summer. I had found myself again, picking up the scraps that had scattered all apart during the past difficult years, reemerging as the Joelle I used to know, the one who'd been tucked deep in my heart. But stronger now, and wiser. This time understanding what love was all about. I rolled my eyes at myself and then couldn't help but hum the Madonna song with the same phrasing. But it was true…and I had to act on that love or else I would never know what might have been. And that was a
what if
I refused to live with.

Blythe, Blythe, just wait. I was so wrong to drive you away. Please be glad I'm coming for you, please don't think you're not worth it. My sweet man, you're so worth it, so worth everything.

Fifteen hours of driving was what we'd estimated. I would be coming up on Missouri by early afternoon, and intended to be in Brandt, Oklahoma, Blythe's hometown, by about 10:00 this evening. By 7:00 I was roughly 50 miles from the Oklahoma state line, and my nervous energy had about put me over the edge. My entire pack of smokes was gone, my hands were on a slight tremble, and I made a sudden decision to stay the night in Wichita. It was vanity more than anything that motivated it; I couldn't bear to confront Blythe reeking of cigarettes and with shadows under my eyes. What's more, he didn't even know I was on the way.

In a small, tidy room at a Comfort Inn I stood under a jet of just-shy-of-scalding water, bracing my hands on the shower tiles and letting the anxiety seep down the drain along with the travel dust. Afterward I coated myself with peach-scented lotion, trying not to think about how much Blythe loved the scent on my skin, snuggled into my robe and twisted my hair into a single clip on the back of my head. Slightly calmer now, I carried my cell phone to the small balcony outside my third-floor room and sank onto a plastic patio chair whose turquoise hue suggested Miami Beach.

The Kansas sky was clear and wide and rosy-tinted with the first hints of sunset as I called Shore Leave. Gran answered after three rings with her unmistakable “
Hel
-lo,” lots of accent on the first syllable. It was more of a demand than a greeting and I said, “Hey there,” and drew a deep breath.

“Joelle, where are you?” she asked. It was Sunday, so the café would be relatively quiet. I imagined Gran leaning over the front counter with its toothpick dispenser and ancient till that tinged a cheerful bell with every sale.

“Wichita,” I said. “I decided to stop for the night. I'm exhausted.”

“Rich called today and talked to Joanie for an hour or so,” Gran informed. “She told him you were on the way.”

My heart clattered hard. I whispered, “What did he say?”

“He wasn't surprised. He promised not to tell Blythe until you were already there.”

My heart was aching at how close I was to him, to Blythe. It had only been a few days since I'd seen him, but it felt immeasurably longer. And we'd parted with such uncertainty. I finally said, “I'm glad Rich understands. And I'm so nervous to meet Christy.”

“Aw, she's a sweet girl, and understanding,” Gran reassured. “And it's not as though you forced her boy into something unwilling.” She squawked a laugh. “Ain't that right?”

My face flooded with heat. I said, “Gran, come on.”

“Here's Camille,” Gran said then, and a second later my oldest's voice was coming over the line. It always startled me to hear my children's voices over the phone; they sounded too grown-up.

“Hi, honey,” I said. “How are you feeling today?”

“Ugh, not great,” Camille responded. Away from the phone she added, “Thanks, Gran,” and then I heard her taking a long sip of something. “7-UP,” she explained. “Why don't they tell you that morning sickness has nothing to do with mornings? It's all day, Mom, seriously.”

I laughed. “I remember. But it goes away from one night to the next and then you'll just be starving.”

“When is that?”

“I'd say for you, in about three or four weeks. Try some saltines.”

“I did,” she said, sounding pitiful. “No help. Clint and Tish just drove the golf cart into town to get me strawberry yogurt. It's the only thing that has sounded remotely good today. At least there hasn't been the fried fish smell all day.”

“Oh honey,” I empathized. “I was just like that too. But I promise you'll feel better in a few weeks.”

“Okay,” she agreed. And then, “Here's Ruthie. Love you, Mom.”

I blew her a kiss and then my youngest chirped, “Hi, Mom!”

“Hi there,” I responded. “Did you have a fun day? What's Aunt Jilly doing?”

“She's out with Justin,” Ruth told me. “They took out the paddle boat after Justin got done with work.”

She chatted about the rest of her day, and before she hung up I requested, “Honey, have Aunt Jilly call me later, all right? And say ‘hi' to Tish and everybody.”

“K, Mom,” she said. “Talk to you later.”

“I love you,” I told her. “Good-night.” And then I leaned and tossed the phone back into the room; it bounced off the bed but I didn't have the energy to retrieve it at the moment.

The sky had become streaked with mackerel clouds in shades of lavender and violet. I inhaled deeply; someone was using a charcoal grill in the vicinity and it smelled fantastic. I realized I hadn't eaten since mid-morning and was debating whether to order a pizza or go in search of an actual grocery store when my cell phone buzzed from inside the room, signaling an incoming call.
Dammit
. I figured it must be Mom, or maybe even Jilly, but when I picked it up from the floor the name on the display read
Blythe
.

My heart swamped my body with sudden hot, frantic blood. I made a sound in my throat that was part longing, part fear. In the end I debated a second too long and it went to voicemail. With shaking fingers I pushed the redial button, imagining my heart as the dynamite at the end of one of those long detonator cords. But in this case, the flame was racing towards the target, not inching.

And then his voice was in my ear, so warm and immediate and intense. “Joelle,” he said. “Joelle. Oh God, baby, where are you?”

“Blythe,” I breathed, sinking to sit on the bed. My heart was thumping so intently it almost drowned him out.

“Gramps told me you're on the way here. Oh God, Joelle, where are you? Are you close?” He sounded shaken, as though he might be pacing.

“Blythe,” I said again, my throat raspy with emotion. “Are you all right? I've been so worried.”

“Aw, sweetheart,” he said, low, his throat likewise rough. “Don't worry about me. You have enough to worry about.”

“I'm in Wichita,” I told him, and longing for him swelled through my body, now that I'd heard his voice.

He breathed out in a rush. “You're only two and a half hours away,” he said. “I would come to you but I can't leave the state. Can you come tonight?”