Smolder (St. Martin Family Saga) (7 page)

8

C
amp was towing
Jenny through the hospital corridor behind Andrew’s gurney. He felt the halt in their progression the moment she froze in place.

“Jenny?” He gently tugged her forward, but she fought and escaped his grip. “Baby?” She was shaking her head. He drew her tightly into his chest. “Jenny, I’m here. Nothing matters right now but helping Andrew. No matter what happens, know in your heart I’ll be here to help you through it.”

They followed Andrew into the bowels of the hospital until they finally stopped at a door with a biohazard sign. They were shown into a small office and asked to wait there for the nurse.

Jenny was nonresponsive, so Camp spoke with the nurse, doctor, and a social worker. He related exactly what had happened. He was speaking with the social worker when she pointed to Jenny and said she didn’t think she, Jenny, was capable of caring for Andrew’s needs. Then the woman grilled him hard about the responsibilities of parents with special needs kids.

She went on and on until Camp wanted to throttle the woman. Had that been what it was like for Jenny since she’d been eighteen, everyone judging her when they had no idea what it was like to raise a child with autism? God, she’d taken on a little brother and his autism when she’d been a kid herself. The nerve of this woman to judge her.

After he’d had enough, been polite for much longer than the social worker deserved, Camp took control. He stood. “Let me ask you a question, Mrs. Daily. Do you have a child with autism?”

She responded tersely. “No, I do not.”

“How about a kid with a special need?”

Camp could tell she was getting pissed. Good—he didn’t want to be the only one. Her lips tight, she said, “No.”

“So you shouldn’t sit there in judgment of those that do. It’s hard. Damned hard. Your job is not to make life any harder for those who have to care for those unable to care for themselves. In fact, your job is probably to collect the facts, leaving your personal thoughts to yourself. If you want to accuse us of being irresponsible, then do it in a court of law. If not, then let us get back to my family.”

Jenny’s head turned in his direction, and her wide eyes were filled with tears when she mouthed his name, but no sound emerged.

He pulled her up by the hand. “Come on, baby. Let’s get back to focusing on Andrew.”

In the waiting area, Clay’s family had trickled in until they were all present in support of him and Jenny and Andrew. He was worried about Jenny. Andrew was getting the care he needed—Camp couldn’t do anything else for him. But Jenny… He had to be able to do something for her.

She didn’t speak, just stared ahead with glassy eyes. A doctor came out to speak with them and she still didn’t acknowledge that she heard anything.

It was good news; Andrew had moved from severe to minor on the coma scale. He was coming around slowly, and whatever they’d done to release the pressure in his skull had worked. Brain scans showed no residual damage.

Camp turned to Jenny and lifted her head. “Hey, did you hear that? Andrew’s going to be okay.” She blinked at him and gasped as she collapsed into his arms.

≈

That night Camp anticipated all of Jenny’s needs. He fed her grilled cheese and tomato soup. He ran a wet towel over her face and combed her hair. He removed their clothes and pulled her in close to spoon her in bed. Camp tenderly kneaded her breast and skimmed his fingers delicately down to her abdomen. His touch remained gentle. He wanted to love her, wanted her to know that she was okay, that Andrew was going to be fine. His penis slid between the wetness at her thighs. She started to fight him, turning to position herself on top.

“No, Jenny, let me love you.”

He traced a loose hair back behind her ear and cupped her face in his palm. His touch remained soft as he trailed the pads of his fingers over her breasts and down her arms. When Jenny tried to grind on him, he said, “Not tonight, baby. Let go and let me show you how much I love you.”

Tonight he would take care of her, love her unconditionally. Tonight he would give, would begin to fill up the empty places that had been drained from years of giving and giving and giving.

Jenny gripped and squeezed him hard in her hand, positioning him at her entrance. “But I need it hard and rough.”

Camp spooned her again while at the same time letting his fingers slide sensually down her thigh, over her hips and down to the front of her sex. He massaged her softly. “You need it like this too.”

“No, I need to feel the pain.” She bucked her ass hard against his groin.

He whispered, “No, Jenny, you need to feel loved.”

He held her close and slid his firmness into her from behind. The hand at the front of her sex massaged her delicately to climax.

They made love into the night. At some point Camp sat on the edge of the bed and stood Jenny, with her back to him, between his legs. She placed her hands on his thighs and arched her back. He held her throat, tilting her head back to rest on his shoulder. Her chest bowed out. With his fee hand Camp rubbed his shaft through the slick lips of her pussy and pushed in steadily. Jenny was taking it slow now. As much as Camp loved her animalistic behavior in bed, he was in awe at this new Jenny. She rocked slowly back and forth on his cock in a leisurely erotic dance that, coupled with her moaning, had him shattering around her within minutes. When she turned around to lower him to the bed, her eyes smoldered with desire. She was a glowing cinder as she rode him, seeking her release.

≈

The next morning Jenny left Camp in their bed at the estate and drove to a place that held the memories of her past. She stood in front of the remnants of the farmhouse where she grew up. She recalled running in the tall grass, chasing butterflies with a net. She stepped on something hard and looked down to see the now rusty metal pan she had used to feed the stray cats. Her mother had caught her sneaking food out to the cats and told her that if she didn’t stop feeding them, every cat in town would be in their yard. Jenny had hoped for that and kept feeding them.

She walked around to the backyard. The old swing set mimicked a frown with its saggy plastic seat and broken chains. The rusty old slide had warped. She saw the spot where Andrew had passed countless hours at the tire swing under the pecan tree. Jenny walked over to it, tested the strength of the rope, and climbed into the tire. She sat on the swing and thought about what she had set into motion so many years ago.

Fate was a powerful force. An inescapable one.

Jenny remembered when her parents died and the news sank in that she would be the sole guardian of her autistic brother. She was eighteen and had horrible thoughts about how she could be set free. She’d hated her brother back then and wanted to leave so many times. Had wanted to get out and just run. Had wanted to be free of the responsibilities. Free of the bonds. Free of… She squeezed her eyes closed, but the words had already sprung to life. She had wanted to be free of Andrew.

She sat in the tire swing and rocked until her body was numb.

≈

Camp awoke alone in their bed. Jenny’s side was cold. Wherever she was, she’d been gone for a while. He got up and went in search of her, but when it was clear she was nowhere on the property, he called her cellphone. She didn’t answer. He called the hospital, but she wasn’t there. He drove to her home in Baton Rouge, but that proved a bad choice; she hadn’t been there either. The thought crossed his mind that she was the type to dive into work to escape, so he called both the lounge and the worksite, to no avail. She’d vanished.

He’d called Clay to see if he could get any information by running background information through the aid of one of his police friends. He didn’t know what else to do.

He was relieved when Clay texted him her childhood home address; she was listed as the current owner on the tax rolls. The property was twenty miles outside of town in secluded pine woods. When Camp turned onto the road, he saw her car and was instantly relieved. He wondered where she could go—the house couldn’t be safely explored. He got out of the car. The wind carried the smell of old wood char to his nostrils.

Camp heard a rhythmic squeaking and followed the sound around to the back of the house. There, under a pecan tree, Jenny swung on a tire, her legs pushing just hard enough to keep her moving. He crossed the yard and stood in front of her. When she looked up, he saw her tear-stained face.

She sat quietly swinging and although he had many questions, he didn’t prod her. He dropped to the ground and leaned against a thick pine, content simply to offer his support. After twenty minutes or so, she started to talk.

“We used to make smiley-face pancakes on our birthdays. Didn’t matter whose birthday either—Mom, Dad, me, Andrew. We all got pancakes. It was hard when they died. Andrew didn’t understand death, not in the typical sense. I didn’t understand it much myself at eighteen.”

She sighed, but kept speaking. “He didn’t understand when I told him our parents weren’t coming back. He just kept asking over and over where had they gone and when would they be home. I tried to associate death with tangible things, but I wasn’t very good at it.

“He’d lost his Snoopy thermos on the first day of kindergarten. The lost thermos was an issue because he was obsessed with Snoopy. When I told him our parents weren’t coming back, just like his Snoopy thermos never did, he went ballistic. He was worried about the pancakes. He said they wouldn’t be here for pancakes on their birthdays. Even though he was just a kid, when he got like that, he could do some damage. He attacked me. Then we went at each other. He pulled my hair and scratched my face. I beat on him any way I could get a punch in. That was how the first few years went.”

Jenny gazed out across the field and seemed to go even farther away. Camp waited patiently for her to come back.

“I didn’t want him. I know it’s selfish, but everything had been taken from me in an instant. My future was now his, only his, and so I resented him. I was too young. I didn’t seek help or even accept any help that was offered. The school sent a woman out, and she showed me how to set up schedules and routines.” She laughed, the sound dry and humorless. “I had never been a keeper of any of those things, and I thought no one could force me to do more, so I didn’t employ the strategies. After all, I’d made the ultimate sacrifice. I had no more to give.”

Camp pushed back against the tree trunk, willing himself not to go to her. He didn’t know what to do, so he didn’t do anything. She blamed herself for so many things, so many events and feelings beyond her power to deal with them, but he knew if he tried to reach out to her, she would shut down.

“A number of times—shit, all the time—I had these thoughts that it would have been easier if he’d died in the fire too.” Her tears started to fall again. “And of course it
would
have been easier on me, but who wishes that on her brother? Who wishes for something even worse on someone who has no control over the way his brain processes life? Who thinks such evil thoughts about a helpless little boy who’d lost his parents and who had no one but a spoiled sister to watch out for him?” She dragged a hand across her face, wiping away the tears. And then she fell silent again.

Camp closed his eyes, wanting to mend her broken heart. Wanting to keep his own from shattering. But it was too late. His heart had been bound to hers when she’d first called him Mr. St. Martin in that polite Southern voice she’d used to put him in his place. He would forever feel her pain and her joy as if they were his own. Feel her despair. Hear her heart beat in sorrow or in happiness.

They were linked, truly family, in a way that went beyond a mere legal joining. They belonged to one another. And he would do anything to see her heart healed.

“When I realized he was the only remaining link I had to my parents and, like it or not, he was my only family, it all started to change.
I
started to change. I went with him to therapy. I employed the strategies they gave me. We became active members of the autism society. It all helped. I had people to talk to and our life got better. I attended college while he was at school, and we fell into a routine.”

She looked at Camp. “Things didn’t stay on top, though. I met someone at school. I thought I was being given another chance at a happy life. He was nurturing and sincere. He loved Andrew and me. I couldn’t believe it. We were going to be a family. One night he was on his way home from Orange Beach in Alabama. We’d wanted to see each other as soon as possible, so he drove late into the night. He was tired or careless. Maybe he even fell asleep. Whatever the cause, he careened off a bridge and drowned. I had to tell Andrew. He had a meltdown.”

She turned away again and pumped her legs until she was swinging fast enough to set the rope whining against the tree.

“My grieving has always been overshadowed by Andrew’s, always had to take second place, but I wasn’t prepared to let him take this away from me. We fought verbally. Physically. Emotionally.” Jenny gasped for breath before saying, “I told him I wished he’d slip into a coma, then I’d finally be happy. He left that night. Ran away. They found him at the defunct railroad crossing. He was prepared to jump to the ground. He kept saying he needed to be in a coma.” Her breath caught. “Camp, I willed him into a coma.”