Dragonfly Creek (4 page)

Chapter Five

March 1988

W
hen Ben got back to his apartment Thursday night and saw the message light blinking on his answering machine, he groaned. It had been a hellish two weeks, and he was almost afraid to check the messages.

Friday before last, he’d had to pick up John at a bar after he and Zanny had a fight. His sensible, reliable brother had spent the night snoring on Ben’s couch in a drunken stupor. The cause for the argument hadn’t been anything small, either. Once he’d learned the truth behind what had turned into a separation, it had taken all Ben’s willpower to not pound John into the ground.

As if that weren’t enough, Zanny had lost the baby she’d just found out she was carrying. Though John had spent the last few nights at home, taking care of her, Ben didn’t expect that to last. He’d known Zanny long enough to see that the troubles between her and John went too deep for all to be forgiven easily. As much as he wanted John to learn to appreciate what he had, Ben took no pleasure in seeing their relationship stumble.

A glance at his watch told him it was approaching six o’clock. He was covered in mud, and as much as he wanted a hot shower and something to eat, he knew he had to listen to the message first. His mother was superstitious about not ignoring a ringing phone, and all the kids had learned to share that belief. Kicking off his work boots, he hit the button. He stripped down to his underwear as the message played.

“Hey, baby brother! What’re you doing? I decided to take a page from your book, and I’ve come home. I’m at the farm. See you soon.” Emma’s voice sounded cheerful and light, making Ben smile.

“Finally, some good news.” He picked up the cordless handset and dialed as he headed to the bathroom. Amelia answered on the second ring. “Hey, Pip. I hear you have a visitor.”

“We do. Are you coming up? Supper’s almost ready.”

“I have to get cleaned up first. Don’t hold it for me. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Will do.”

As he showered, Ben thought about what Nonny had told him when he’d called her earlier in the week, after his father had told him Emma was coming home.

“Emma’s not in a good place right now, Ben. Don’t you mention it to anyone, as she wants to talk to you all in person, but I thought someone there needed to be prepared. She’s got a lot on her mind. When she gets there, please, please, go easy on her. She needs love and support right now.”

Ben tried to get his grandmother to tell him what the secret was, but she’d kept her silence. Emma hadn’t come home for Christmas, which was a first. Instead, she’d stayed in Georgia with the jerk she’d been seeing when Ben had left Savannah back in October. They’d broken up not long after, and Ben knew she hadn’t taken that well, but Emma had been closemouthed about the whole thing. Nonny had told him about it and that the man had married someone else on Valentine’s Day. That had caused Ben a special kind of anguish because of his experience with Ainsley a few years back.

As he rinsed his hair, he closed his eyes and let the hot water wash over him. After the frustration of the past two weeks, he hoped he could keep his promise to Nonny to be extra kind to Emma.

He’d started working with a local landscape contractor after leaving the job at the library last month. They were putting in some large commercial flower beds for a local bank, and the manual labor of the work had been soothing. His boss, Kyle, knew a little of what was going on with Ben’s family and had been more than happy to let Ben take the more menial aspect of the job so he could work out some of his frustration.

Clean and excited to see his sister, Ben hit the road. He pulled up at the farm a short time later. To his surprise, Emma was sitting on the front porch, waiting for him, her knees drawn up to her chest. She rose as he approached, and Ben slowed to a halt several feet away. In the light shining through the open doorway, her figure was limned in gold. Her pregnant figure.

“Son of a bitch.” He had the strong, instinctive need to hit something—someone in particular. He rubbed his hand over his mouth hard, looking away for a few seconds as his heart broke. “Damn it, Em. Come here.” Opening his arms, he folded her in for a gentle hug.

Emma held onto him and cried. “I’m sorry, Benny.”

He kissed her hair. “Hush. Nothing to be sorry about. I’m assuming it’s the jerk’s?” He stepped back so that he could see her face.

“Yeah.”

“I never did like him.”

She laughed. “I know. I feel so stupid. I never expected this to happen. I should have been more careful.”

Ben wiped her wet cheeks with his thumbs. “No details, please. I really might have to fly down to Georgia and kill him if I think about that. Does he know?”

“He does. He just doesn’t care. And given the way things have turned out, I’m glad he doesn’t.”

Keeping his arm around her shoulders, he guided her up onto the porch and inside. “How long are you home for?”

“For good.”

He smiled down at her, though at five-foot-ten, she was nearly as tall as he was. “No kidding?”

Emma gave him a tremulous smile back. “No kidding.”

“Huh. Think Perry County can stand having all us Campbells here at once?”

She squeezed him with a suddenness that made him squeak. “I’ve missed you.”

Amelia peeked around the corner of the dining room. “Are you going to stand there all day, or are you going to come eat? I held dinner.”

Ben scowled and tousled her hair. “I told you to not do that, Pip.”

“Well, I didn’t do it just for you. Mom isn’t back from John and Zanny’s yet. The pasta’s on the verge of turning to mush.”

“So she doesn’t know yet?” Ben asked Emma.

“No.” Her trepidation was plain to see.

He tightened his arm around her shoulders in a supportive squeeze. “It’ll be okay. How’d Dad take it?”

“Okay. He’s at the barn. Needed a few minutes. I understand it’s been a rough couple of weeks.”

“You could say that,” Ben agreed as they sat down at the table. “Yeah, you could definitely say that.”

Chapter Six

B
y late April, grass-cutting season had started in earnest, and Ben was working ten- and twelve-hour days. When a late-afternoon shower rained the crew out one Wednesday, he was grateful for the reprieve. After an extra-long shower, he pulled on some old comfortable jeans, then ambled into the living room. His apartment faced out over the parking lot and the river beyond, and he opened the window to let in some fresh air. The rain was still falling, though it had slacked off a bit, and the building’s overhang kept Ben mostly dry. When a sheriff’s department cruiser parked next to his truck and his cousin Rick got out, Ben whistled down at him.

“What are you doing, Trouble?”

“Coming to see if you’re busy tonight.”

Ben pretended to primp. “Well, I was gonna wash my hair.”

Rick shot him a rude gesture, and Ben laughed.

“Thought we might tag-team John, get him out of the house,” his cousin called up. “He gets off work in about an hour. Interested?”

“Absolutely. Let me grab a shirt. You coming up or want me to come down?”

“How long you gonna take to get a shirt on?”

“Two minutes.”

“I’ll wait.”

He actually took closer to five minutes, but he didn’t figure Rick minded, given the way he was flirting with one of Ben’s neighbors on the back stoop.

“Hey, Mary.”

“Ben. You and your cousin should come by the bar tonight. Have one on me.” Mary was a waitress at the Bent Wheel bar up the street, and she’d been eyeing Ben since he moved in.

“We might do that,” he told her. He was feeling a little raw, and the idea of spending some simple time with a pretty face and a curvy body was appealing. Rick smacked his arm lightly.

“Let’s get John before he heads home. Mary, nice to see you again.”

When the woman gave Rick a once-over that was just a little too familiar, Ben realized there was more to the story than met the eye. He stopped Rick when they got to Ben’s truck.

“You and Mary…?”

“We’ve spent some time together. Why? You interested?”

“Nah. Not really. I didn’t realize you two were involved.”

To his surprise, Rick’s face flushed a little. “We’re just… we’re not really involved. After I broke up with Jennie, Mary kind of… We’re just friends.”

Ben clapped his shoulder. “I understand. I’ll follow you up to John’s. Otherwise, people might think you’re chasing me.”

“Yeah, you look like some dangerous criminal. Tell you what, I need to get cleaned up before we go out. Why don’t you stop and ask him, since it’s on the way, and you guys just come on over to the house if he’s interested. We’ll take his car.”

Following Rick’s cruiser up Highway 15, Ben let his thoughts stray to the place he’d tried to keep them from all day. He’d worked on a new client’s yard that morning, and when Ben had seen whose house it was, he’d almost quit on the spot before Kyle told him why they were there.

“Old Mrs. Brewer passed away a few months back. The guys who were doing her landscaping didn’t want to keep on, and the estate hired us. No one’s living here. From what I understand, the daughter barely came back for the funeral.”

The explanation had helped, and Ben had been able to lower his hackles enough to do the work. But being that close to anything directly connected to Ainsley was disquieting. Ben had only been to her house once after she’d left—when her mother had broken the news to him that not only had Ainsley been playing him, but she’d married someone else the previous weekend.

With the past sitting so firmly on his shoulders that night, Ben was thankful Rick showed up when he did.

John was just coming out of the metal-and-glass building where he worked when Ben pulled into the parking lot. Ben rolled down the window and pulled up behind his brother’s car to wait.

“They let you out early for good behavior?”

“Something like that. What brings you here?”

“The need to get into some trouble and avoid my memories. Rick stopped by. Let’s go see what we can stir up.”

John rubbed his neck. “You know, that sounds good. We meeting at his place?”

“Yep. You’re driving.”

“I’ll follow you over there.”

It was a short drive from the office to Christopher, where Rick rented a small house. Ben parked next to his cousin’s cruiser, and they went inside. The house was so small they were able to call from the living room to the bathroom easily, and they quickly decided on a plan.

“New diner went in next to the bowling alley,” Rick poked his head out to tell them. His face was half covered in shaving cream, half clean. “I’d like to throw some balls and knock shit over. How’s that sound?”

“Like a damned good plan,” Ben said, thumbing through a thriller that was lying on the end table. “Sounds like you had a rough day, too.”

“Ran into Jennie. That’s all it takes. You?”

“Ran into my own ghost. John?”

“Taxes. Zanny.”

“Enough said,” Ben declared. “Ever wish we could just run away to Mexico? Get blind stinking drunk on a beach with some half-naked women?”

Rick stepped out of the bathroom, fully shaven but still shirtless, and exchanged a look with John. “When’d you get your heart trampled on? Is that why you came home?” He pointed at the book. “Don’t lose my spot.”

Ben made a show of putting the bookmark back in the book exactly where it had been and carefully laying it down. “I’d rather not discuss the specifics, thanks.”

Rick ducked into the bedroom to get dressed. John, seated in the arm chair beside the couch, nudged Ben with his foot. “Does your ghost have anything to do with whatever it is in your wallet you didn’t want Emma to see?”

Several weeks earlier, right after Emma had returned to town, John and Zanny had shown up just as Ben was chasing his sisters around the farm, trying to recover his wallet. They’d gotten into a discussion about what they each carried in their wallets, and Ben had answered Amelia’s queries noncommittally. Before he’d been able to react, Emma had dug into his back pocket and taken his wallet. The girls had played keep-away for a bit, and if their mother hadn’t interceded, Emma would have gone through Ben’s wallet.

He’d taken to carrying his wallet in his front pocket. Even his daredevil sister wouldn’t attempt going for it there.

Ben scowled. “Did you miss the ‘don’t want to discuss it’ part of this conversation?”

“No.”

Rolling his eyes, Ben shrugged. “You’re worse than a woman. Yeah, it does. There. Topic closed.” When John narrowed his gaze, Ben stopped him cold with a question of his own. “Talked to Zanny this week? I cut the grass yesterday afternoon.”

“Thanks for that. And no. Which is fine by me.”

Figuring he’d made his point and not really wanting to push his brother’s buttons, Ben asked Rick about a couple of the other books lying on the coffee table. A heated discussion ensued, as they were all voracious readers with similar tastes.

By the time they reached the bowling lane and ordered their food, Ben was starting to relax a little. The basket of fresh yeast rolls on the table between them helped.

Since it was a weeknight, and rainy to boot, they had the bowling alley pretty much to themselves. Nursing the same beers they’d started when they arrived, they bowled until ten o’clock, when the owner told them he was closing up.

The physical activity and violence of knocking down pin after pin had done the trick. Ben was still feeling a little of the sting of being at the Brewer house, but he’d moved to a better mental place to handle the memories it’d wrought. The aggression was gone, leaving only a hollowness in its place.

As they drove back to Rick’s, John made a confession. “Zanny wants me to start seeing other people while we’re separated.”

It was a good thing his brother was driving, because Ben and Rick both turned to John with identical exclamations of shock. They’d reached a stoplight near a popular bar attached to a somewhat seedy hotel, and John surprised them by putting on his turn signal.

“I need a drink. You guys mind?”

“No. Not after that revelation,” Ben said. “When the hell did this happen?”

“After Easter.”

The rest of the conversation waited until they were seated in a dark corner booth and the waitress had taken their orders.

“What the hell possessed her to tell you that?” Rick asked. “She actually said that? To go see other people?”

“Yeah. Told me that if I was going to have an affair, to just get it over with while we were apart.” John’s face reflected his confusion and his hurt. “How could she say that? I thought she knew I wasn’t a cheater.”

“I’m not that surprised,” Ben admitted, “now that I’m thinking about it. That sounds like something Zanny’d do.” The waitress came with their drinks, and he paid her.

“Well, you’re at an advantage over me,” John told him, a stunned look on his face.

“Yeah, me, too,” Rick said. “Because that sure as hell doesn’t sound like her to me.”

Ben was relieved when his brother nursed his whiskey instead of downing it. He took a sip of his Coke and rum, then pushed it aside.

“Zanny’s always had this impression that people only spend time with her because they have to. It’s how she grew up, how she sees herself. Not how we see her,” he hurried to explain as John’s face grew dark, “but how she sees herself. That’s why I think she’s pushing the separation thing. To give you an out that won’t tear her apart so much if you want it.”

“I don’t want it. I’ve never wanted it. She knows that.”

Ben disagreed. “I don’t think she does. And it isn’t so much a reflection of you as it is of her. That’s what Emma thinks, anyhow, and I believe she’s right. She knows Zanny better than anyone, except you,” he told John. “And in some ways, she knows her better, because they’re both female.”

“So how do I convince her I want to stay married to her?”

Drawing in a deep breath, Ben prepared to say the words he knew would hurt John, but that his brother needed to hear. “You can’t. It has to come from her. It’s like getting an alcoholic to stop drinking. Until they’re ready, nothing you say or do is going to make them stop.”

None of them had much to say after that, and they quickly finished their drinks. John handed Ben his keys when they reached the car. Without a word, he got in and rolled the window down, leaning back in the seat with his eyes closed.

They didn’t speak again until they’d reached Rick’s house.

John ran his hand over his hair. “I needed this tonight. Thanks, guys.”

“No thanks necessary. I think we all needed it,” Rick told him from the backseat. “We should do this more often.”

“That we should.” Ben turned the motor off, and they all got out of the car, then just stood there for a few moments. “John, you okay to drive?”

“Yeah. It was more mental than physical.”

They said goodnight, and as Ben headed back into town, he kept thinking about the utter confusion that his brother seemed to be feeling. Those thoughts brought back the memories of his own confusion in the days and weeks after Ainsley had left. He’d known her for only one summer, and her betrayal had almost brought him to his knees. He couldn’t imagine how hard it must be for John, who’d known Zanny practically their whole lives and had spent the last five years loving her, building a family with her.

He’d always thought the kind of love his parents had was a blessing, not a curse. But after Ainsley, that view had changed a bit. Even so, when he’d see John and Zanny and their growing family on vacations and holidays, he felt envy. Now, though, he didn’t know if John was the lucky one or if he was.

He did think his parents were very brave, though, braver than he’d known. To put their heart out there as much as they had to, to have the kind of love they shared, left them completely vulnerable. And as many nights as Ben had spent wishing he had someone beside him, sharing a life, he didn’t know if he would ever be brave enough to reach for that kind of relationship if the opportunity came up.

“I wonder if you ever think of me, or even remember my name,” he told the darkness of the night as he parked his truck behind the apartment. “If you have any idea how much I loved you or how much I cared. And I hate that I let you have that power over me, even now. Because if you came back to Hazard? I might not be strong enough to stay away from you.”

The hell of it was, he meant every word. He always had. That’s why he’d stayed away so long—and why he’d finally come home. One way or another, he had to exorcise Ainsley from his soul. All he had to do now was figure out how.