Tru Love (12 page)

Chapter Sixteen

              Truman’s mother is in the garden when they arrive. She’s wearing faded jeans and a long sleeved cotton shirt tied at her waist. The red and gold highlights in her brown hair are natural and an exact match to her son’s. She rises when they walk through the back gate and steps out from among a thicket of coral rose bushes.

              “Hey, mom,” Truman calls. His hand tightens reassuringly around Genny’s when her feet slow. He whispers for her ears only, “
She’s
a lamb.” Meaning, Genny supposes, that she’ll accept Genny blindly into her heart.

              “Truman,” his mother speaks his name through a delighted smile then focuses her gaze on Genny. “This must be Genny. We’ve heard a lot about you,” she says, as she removes her soiled gloves and drops them to the ground. She receives Genny in a light embrace. “Welcome.”

              “Thank you.”

              His mother smells like the fresh air, like the roses she

was trimming and the lingering scent of a floral shampoo. Her touch is soft, meant to cradle not hold. Her eyes are green, undiluted by even a trace of yellow or brown. She’s stunning. Not a polished beauty like Genny’s mom, nor does she wear the cultivated mask Genny sees on a lot of girls at school; Mrs. Lennox is a natural beauty.

              His mother steps back so that there’s an arm’s length between them.

              “You’re here to see the dog. She’s probably sleeping, I’m afraid. Kendra does a lot of that now.” She guides them toward the back deck. “Her favorite spot is under the swing.”

              She starts up the wood steps and Truman follows behind her.

Kendra is more yellow than gold and has a muzzle of white fur that almost looks like a beard. She
is
curled up under a swing built for two, but her tail twitches back and forth a few times and her eyes lift briefly before falling into a squint.

Truman laughs. “Come on, girl, I promised Genny you were going to amaze her with a few never before seen feats of canine wonder.”

“Truman,” his mom chides gently. She turns to Genny and

says, “Kendra was quite the magician when we first got her.” She smiles and shakes her head. “She was the Houdini of the dog world, capable of escaping any and every form of leash or run.”

“Creatively,” Truman points out.

“Yes,” his mother agrees. “Once, we came home and found her on the roof, chewing on a piece of trellis. I still can’t explain that one. But she is thirteen now and has arthritis.”

“She still loves to              impress, though,” Truman insists.

“I’m going to set out some iced tea and sweets in the kitchen. Help yourselves when you come in,” she invites and slips between a set of French doors.

“The roof? Really?” Genny asks.

“Yep.” Truman beams with pride.

“And you and your sister didn’t have anything to do with that?”

“Of course not. Kendra is a climber. I swear she was a cat in another life.”

“Hmm,” Genny doubts that. “I’ve heard of a dog that can skateboard and one who drives a golf cart, but climb a trellis to the roof?”

              “What if I can get her to climb that tree?” He points to a Japanese maple in the yard. A few branches are low enough a younger dog might be able to jump to one, but climb?

              “Climb,” Genny stresses, “like a cat. Not jump.”

              “Climb, as defined in Webster’s,” he promises.

              “And it won’t hurt her?” She bends over to get a better look at the golden lab. “She looks pretty old.” And about as likely to move as a mushroom.

              “Shh,” Truman warns. “She doesn’t know she’s old.”

              Genny rolls her eyes.

              “So, what are you willing to give up to see such a feat?”

              “Some heavy petting?” The words slip out of her mouth before their full implication hits her. She manages to hold his gaze even while her cheeks are filling with color. “I meant, for the dog,” she clarifies, though her lips are burning with their remembered kiss.

“Of course,” he murmurs. He steps closer, runs his fingers up the inside of her arm. “Dogs have it made. My next life, I’m coming back a German Shepherd.”

              Genny watches his lips curl into a smile, too mesmerized by his closeness, his body heat, his intentions, to return the gesture. His hands fall lightly on her hips and turn her and then his lips are on hers. Her eyes close and her senses bloom with a sensitivity she’s never experienced before. She feels the flutter of her lashes on her skin, the rub of his cheek against hers; she smells the salt and citrus of his skin and the perfume of the roses as though they’re standing among them; she listens to his breath—it seems to purr in his chest—and accepts the thrust of his tongue against hers; her fingers trace the muscles of his forearms, bicep, shoulders, dipping into and over the scalloped edges, smooth as stone, as dense but not unyielding. She feels his arms flex and momentum as he pulls her first closer and then steps away.

              The cool air stings her skin. She opens her eyes and the world is a kaleidoscope of shape and color. She watches the shattered prisms move in a dizzying clash, fascinated by the display that is the result of kissing Truman.

              “Sorry.” His voice is anything but apologetic. In fact, the word disgruntled comes to Genny’s mind and she reacts to it by smiling.

              “You’re laughing?”

Surprise makes his tone sharper, so Genny blinks her eyes, clearing her vision. “I wasn’t laughing,” she says. “I was smiling.”

“What’s funny?”

“Not funny. Beautiful,” she assures him, and it seems to work. The tension in his face eases. He takes a deep breath and pushes his hands into the front pockets of his jeans.

“My mother’s in the kitchen,” he explains. He nods at the large paned window and Genny can just make out the shadow of a body in motion.

“Getting us iced tea,” Genny says.

“And Scotchbread Cookies,” Truman agrees.

“I’ve never had those.”

“My mother’s American. What you’re going to taste is nothing like the real thing. She tries, though. She puts a lot of heart into cooking, but—” He shrugs and smiles a little wickedly. “You’ve been warned.”

              She would tell him he’ll never get a home-cooked meal at her house, but he’s already moving away from her and toward the far corner of the deck. He lifts up the seat of a bench and rummages around in what looks like bags of dog food. Even through her dreams, the sound of crinkling doggie treat bags wakes her and Kendra is on her feet and at Truman’s heels in seconds.

              Truman holds up a handful of round, pale colored biscuits and Kendra starts prancing and panting her excitement.

              “She goes crazy for these,” Truman says. He clicks his tongue against his teeth and tells the dog to stay, then he dashes off the deck, down the stairs and to the Japanese maple. He pockets the treats, jumps lightly off his feet and grabs hold of a branch. Genny watches with growing appreciation as he swings his body up into the tree, climbs until he’s about fifteen feet from the ground, and then arranges the biscuits in the fork of two branches.

              Kendra stays put the entire time, even after Truman returns empty-handed.

              “Ready?” Truman’s eyes are full of anticipation and it’s infectious. Genny nods, hoping she’s going to lose.

              “Now girl.” Truman releases the dog with a snap of his fingers then turns to Genny, “Watch this,” he says. “Don’t even blink.”

              Genny watches. Kendra, thirteen years old and arthritic, leaps from the staircase, makes ground, then dashes for the tree. She does not slow down, but uses her momentum to propel her up the side of the tree, her claws clacking, and into the leafy branches above. A moment later, she can hear the dog munching her treats.

              Genny turns to Truman who executes an elaborate bow.

              “My dog. Isn’t she amazing?”

              “Definitely amazing,” Genny agrees. “A dog who can climb trees like a cat.”

              “She doesn’t do so well getting down now, though.”

              Truman returns to the tree and waits beneath it. He offers his shoulder to Kendra who slides a short distance down the trunk on her front paws and then plants them firmly on Truman’s shoulder. He carries the dog back to the deck, wrapped around his shoulders. Kendra is smiling, her pink tongue bobbing between her teeth. Her blue eyes look clearer. Her tail is wagging furiously, patting Truman on the back.

              “As much as I like to show off her skills,” Truman says as he places the dog on the deck. “Kendra likes it more.”

              Genny believes him.

              Truman’s mom taps on the window to get their attention.

              “The iced tea,” he says.

              Kendra follows them inside and curls up under the breakfast table. Truman’s mom arranged a plate of square, imprinted cookies on a plate and placed them on the island. Next to it is a pitcher of sun-tea and two glasses.

              “I’m going back to the garden,” she says. “Give me a shout when you’re leaving.” She smiles at Genny. “I hope we’ll be seeing a lot of you around here, Genny,” she invites.

              “Thank you, Mrs. Lennox.”

              “Trudy,” she corrects, as she makes her way to the back door. “You’re just about an adult and, anyway, it makes me seem a lot younger than I really am.”

              “Your mom is nice,” Genny says when they’re alone.

              “So is yours.”

              “She is,” Genny says slowly. “Usually. Not today, though.”

              “She’s worried,” Truman says.

              “She doesn’t know you,” Genny points out. “What does she have to worry about?”

“She thinks I want to jump you. That I’ll hurt you like Hunter did. That I’m not good enough for you. All the normal things mothers worry about when their daughters start dating someone new.”

              “You’ve had a lot of experience with this, then?” Genny asks. “First dates and new girls?”

              He chooses a cookie from the plate, but instead of eating it, holds it in the palm of his hand. “This could be a paper weight,” he says, smiling so that his eyes are shining. When she doesn’t respond he moves closer, lays an elbow on the counter in front of her and peers into her eyes. “Some experience,” he admits. “Not a lot.” He traces her lips with his index finger. “Does it matter?”

              Genny’s breath shudders around the tip of his finger and she watches as Truman’s eyes grow heavy, darker.

              “Maybe. I don’t know.”

              “I can’t erase the past, Genny, just learn from it,” he says.

              Which makes a lot of sense, even if it does eat at her.

              “So I’m going to benefit from all the mistakes you made with the girls before me,” she tries to put a positive spin on it.

              “That’s how it works,” he agrees. “And, honestly, there have only been a few.”

              “Hmm.” She lets that settle. She would like to press for an exact number, because a few to some people can mean four or five. For her, it means three, as firmly as ‘a couple’ means two. But by the time she’s done working this out in her mind, and hears the insecurities shrieking between the words, she’s too disgusted with herself to risk it. And she realizes that it doesn’t matter if he dated fifty girls or five before he landed at Fraser, so long as he’s with Genny now.

              “We’ll talk more about this,” he promises. “When the time is right.”

              “When is that?”

              “When we decide our level of commitment,” he says and Genny is startled by the fact that she’s known Truman for a total of five days. It seems so much longer. “I know,” he says, reading her thoughts. “And it’s more than second sight for me. We feel right together.”

              “You said you’ve seen us,” she prompts. She’s ready now to hear more. A year from now, are they still together? Are they more committed to each other? By then, they will have moved beyond kissing and hand-holding, right? What will it be like? Will they survive the changes, like Serena and Victor, or will they be a couple that crashes and burns?

              “I’ve had a peek,” he confirms.

              “Tell me.”

              “Remember, things change,” he cautions. “All the time.”

              “Are we together?” she presses. “Are we happy?” And then, because she
has
to know, she asks, “Are we lovers?”

              “Yes. But we’re more than that. We’re committed to each other.”

Chapter Seventeen

              “Come on,” he says, shattering the spell his words of forever wove around her. “Let’s get out of here.”

              He closes his hand and allows the cookie to crumble. He does it with another, then drops the remains of both in the trash can under the kitchen sink.

              “We’ve been doing this for years,” Truman confides. “We don’t have the heart to tell my mother she’ll never make it onto the Food Network.”

              Genny stares at him, her mind still whirling with his words and their implications though she is, at least, breathing again. For a moment, when he spoke of happily ever after, she felt a tightness in her chest; her lungs burned; her eyes teared. She thought her heart might burst, but why? Because the stirrings she spent the past few days denying are more than physical attraction? Or because the idea of love at first sight makes her skeptical nature rears its head?

Dating your best friend wasn’t a guaranteed path to true

love, either,
she reminds herself.

              “I scared you,” he guesses. “I’m sorry, Genny. I’m not trying to rush you. The truth is, I don’t know where we’re going. I only know what’s possible.”

              “I’m not scared. Stunned,” she corrects. “Confused. I do have this feeling that I’ve known you forever and when I’m with you I’m exactly where I want to be, but. . .”

              “Too much, too soon,” he says.

              She nods.

              “I’m in no hurry,” he assures her. “I think a good first step is just to acknowledge that we’re together. Exclusively. How does that feel?”

              “Good.” And her smile proves it.

              “Great.” He moves to the refrigerator and grabs a covered basket from the bottom shelf. “Our lunch,” he says, holding it up. “Very European. Cheeses, bread, fruit and sparkling water.”

              He leads her through the house, past several rooms and into a foyer. The walls here are covered with framed photographs of Truman and his family. Genny only gets a glance before he’s pulling her out the front door.

              “You’re supposed to let your mom know we’re leaving,” Genny reminds him.

              “Oh, yeah.”

              He changes direction, following the cobbled path around the house to the back. He doesn’t take them beyond the gate but calls over to his mother who answers with orders to have a great time.

              “Where’s your father?” Genny asks once they’re settled in Truman’s truck.

              “Napa.” He pulls away from the curb and navigates slowly through the neighborhood. “Trying to figure out a way to honestly beat the zoning laws.”

              “Is that possible?”

              “If he promises to build a play park for little kids or gift a piece of land for a natural preserve.”

              “Really?”

“Yeah. That’s how it’s done. Build something commercial, but provide a human- or animal-friendly balance.”

              “Wow. Capitalism at work.”

              “A better example than some,” he agrees.

              “Do you miss Scotland?”

              “Sure. We go back at least once a year, usually in the summer. But we haven’t actually lived there in four or five years.”

              “Because your father’s work requires that you move a lot?”

              “Now it does. When he was just into designing and manufacturing golf clubs, we were stay-put. Then his ambitions grew. He built his first golf course in Scotland and it was a success. Then he moved us to Australia, where he designed and oversaw the building of another course. Eventually, we came to the U.S. Florida first, then here.”

              Truman takes the one-oh-one exit north and they enter the stream of traffic waiting to cross over the Golden Gate Bridge. Genny watches the bicyclists and pedestrians on the narrow sidewalk. She wonders, idly, if they’ll ever allow bungee jumping here. Beyond the swaying cables, Genny spots Alcatraz Island and several ferries bobbing on the surf around it.

              “Moving was good for my family, at first,” he continues, his words coming at a thoughtful pace. “We really couldn’t stay in Scotland. Too many memories. . .but I think my mom is ready to settle down again. She’s made some comments about having her own furniture again, and tending to her own garden.”

              “She seems happy,” Genny says, recalling the woman’s brilliant smile and easy nature.

              “I don’t know if she can ever be happy again. She’s not waiting anymore, though.”

              “Waiting?”

              They clear the bridge and pick up speed, entering an area of freeway surrounded by dense foliage.

              “Yeah.”

              She hears the hesitance in Truman’s voice, which is so unusual and clashes with his normal confidence that Genny turns and stares at him.

              “Waiting for what?”

              He glances at her, a sharp, piercing sadness in his brown eyes, and Genny feels her heart kick into high gear. His confession, she realizes. The other half he promised her Friday. This is it. Fear beats in the pulse at her throat and she knows she doesn’t want to hear it. She doesn’t want to know anything about Truman that could challenge her growing feelings for him.

              His lips thin and he turns his attention back to the road. “You don’t want to hear this.”             

“I do,” she says, but the trembling in her voice is obvious. “Whatever it is, you didn’t mean it, right?”

“You’re not ready.” He shakes his head, the reddish strands catching the sunlight from the window and turning a fiery gold. “We’re not ready.”

He might be right about that. More time together would make their relationship stronger. But she doesn’t like surprises. She never has. She started peeking at her Christmas presents when she was three years old.

And she doesn’t want to walk blindly into loving Truman. If that’s where she’s going, she needs full disclosure.

“Let me decide for myself,” Genny says.

It’s better coming now than later, she tells herself. If it’s something so awful she can’t accept it, or him, then she’ll lose less of herself if it happens now. If she has to walk away from him before she
knows
she’s in love with him.

              But she can’t imagine doing that. Not thinking about him, or being with him, or wanting to be with him.

              He spares her a glance—probing and thoughtful—then returns his attention to the road. He begins slowly,

“Second sight isn’t always a hundred percent.”

“Things change,” she says, recalling their previous conversations about his gift. “Outcomes change.”

He nods. “And sometimes I read it wrong. Even now.”

“What does that mean?”

“Second sight comes with. . .responsibilities.”

“Like me?” she prompts.

“Yes and no. I had a responsibility to save you from that car, if I could. But you’re more than that to me. You were from the beginning. The first time I saw your face in my mind, I felt my whole world shift. I didn’t understand it right away. It took a few months for me to realize I would fall in love with you.” He smiles ruefully, but then admits, “When I first realized I was gifted, I wasn’t ready. At first, I thought I was having waking dreams, you know? I was scared. I didn’t
look
. I refused to look too closely at the images.”

And that’s where this is going, Genny realizes. Truman saw something he could have changed, and didn’t.

“You let someone down,” Genny guesses.

He shakes his head and his hands tighten on the steering wheel. “Worse than that.”

              He expels heavily and then continues, “Remember what I said about not getting a chance to learn from my mistakes before hurting other people?” he prompts.

              “Yes.”

              “I
wasn’t
as lucky as you, Genny. I hurt a lot of people. My family mostly. You can’t really know what that’s like unless you’ve actually done something you can’t take back.”

              “Families forgive,” Genny says.

              Time seems to stand still. Outside the windows, cars pass by in a blur. The sky, with the leafy points of fir and pine, spins overhead. She watches Truman’s hands tighten on the steering wheel, listens to his breath as it rushes past his teeth, and presses back into her seat, seeking something substantial to hold onto.

              “My mother was waiting to die,” he says softly, before his voice wavers with the remainder of his confession. “At least, she spent a lot of years looking for a way to live after. . . after my sister died.” He turns to her, his brown eyes full of memory. “It was me. I was responsible for that. I could have stopped it from happening, I promised my parents that I would, but I refused to really
look
.

              “And I didn’t save her.”

              Though she was waiting for them, the words form a fist in her throat, choking off her air; they pin her to her seat and peel her eyelids back from her eyes. That’s what it feels like. A shock that is so complete it’s physically commanding.

Did she hear him right?
She must have, because she never would have guessed that was it. That his mistake was one a person can never really escape. How do you bring the dead back to life?

She feels the truck slow. They approach and follow a scenic exit off the freeway. One big parking lot with spaces marked for RVs and campers, and a stone wall with signs that warn of the danger of climbing. A few people stand at the binoculars, looking out over the wine country. Truman parks but lets the engine idle.

He’s waiting for her now, sitting stiffly in his seat, staring through the windshield. His profile could be carved from stone, it’s so smooth, so intense in its misery.

Genny’s mind is numb, though she’s aware of a thousand questions swirling around in her brain, beyond her grasp
.
Physical sensation returns slowly, so that she’s aware of the cold permeating her fingers and toes, spreading up her limbs, threatening to still her heart.

How? How did this happen?
And then understanding breaks over her as clear as rain.

“Your first vision was of your sister dying,” she says.

“Yes. I was twelve years old. Siobhan was nine.” He shakes his head, “Every time I saw it, I just couldn’t look.”

“A younger sister.”

“Yes. She was a sweet kid, always trying to keep up with me and Holly. That’s how it happened.” He hesitates, lost in thought. He rests his forehead on his hands, which are still draped over the steering wheel. “There’s a train trellis near our house in Scotland. If you time it right, it’s safe. You can run along the ties and get to the village faster than taking the streets.

“In my vision, I saw Siobhan running along that trellis. I didn’t know she was running after me, trying to keep up. But I should have.”

Genny doesn’t want to hear the end of this story, she can’t form the words to stop him, though. She’s trapped in his nightmare, waiting for the train to come thundering down the tracks.

“She fell,” he says. “I heard her scream. Until then, I didn’t even know she was behind me. But everything about that afternoon was identical to my vision. The pale blue sky, the scattered clouds. The wood was slick from an earlier rain. Soft, slippery.

“I turned, but I was too far away and too late, anyway. She had long, strawberry blond hair. That’s what I saw, her hair streaming behind her. I threw myself down on the ties. I don’t know why. Maybe I thought, in some irrational part of my brain, that I could grab a hold of her.

“She fell face-forward, the wind tearing off her coat. But in my vision, I saw her face, her mouth open, screaming. Her eyes scared. Beyond scared.” He pauses, then continues in a whisper, “Sometimes I think if I tried to save her, if I was almost on time, that’s what I would have seen. Her face. If I tumbled with her. And for a long time I wished that had happened. That we had gone together.”

Genny feels tears on her face. “You were twelve years old,” she protests.

“That makes it a little easier to bear,” he admits.

“You didn’t know,” she says.

“Like I said, I didn’t want to look.”

“No one would want to look too closely at that,” Genny argues. Most people would fight to get that out of their minds.

“If I had looked, I could have saved her.”

“You don’t know that.”

He lifts his head and Genny can see the streaks on his face where his tears traveled. She reaches toward him, runs her fingertips over the dampness.

“You don’t know,” she says again.

He presses his hand against hers, holding it to his cheek for a moment before peeling it away and breaking contact between them.

“After that, after Siobhan died, I promised myself I would always look. I would always try to help.”