33 The Return of Bowie Bravo (11 page)

He pulled out the chair across from her and sat. “Got a minute?”

She raised her mug, took a slow sip. “Sure.” Her voice betrayed none of her inner turmoil. At least she could be grateful for that.

“Johnny’s hand seems pretty well healed.”

Brett had taken the stitches out the day before—and was that why he’d sought her out tonight? To talk about Johnny’s hand? “Yeah. Kids tend to heal up pretty quick.”

Bowie shifted in the chair, leaning back, sticking a hand in his pocket. He pulled something out, laid it on the table between them.

She smiled when she saw what it was. “Your old Swiss Army knife.” The red handle was worn from years of use, the white-cross logo rubbed away to not much more than a pale shadow against the red.

“My uncle Clovis gave it to me…”

“For Christmas, the year you were seven,” she finished for him around the sudden thickness in her throat.

His eyes held hers. “You remember.” She said nothing. It seemed wiser not to speak. Clovis was Chastity’s brother. He was also Brand’s mostly retired partner in Cook and Bravo, Attorneys at Law. Their office was across from the courthouse, on the same street as the clinic. “Uncle Clovis never taught me how to use it, though.” He turned his hands over, stared at his long, scarred fingers, his calloused palms. “Cut the hell out of myself more than once, learning how. I always wished I had a dad, you know? A real dad who lived with us and taught me things like how to use a pocketknife.”

She got his drift then. “You want to give that knife to Johnny.”

“I do.” Suddenly, he was so very formal-sounding. “And to teach him how to use it. With your permission.”

“He’s only six.”

“Seven in May.”

She couldn’t help it. She chuckled. “You sound like him. ‘I’m six and a
half,
Mom.’” She imitated Johnny’s insistent tone.

“Well, he is. And I notice he does fine with a steak knife. Plus, I don’t think it’s a good idea to protect kids from everything that might possibly hurt them. A kid needs a chance to work with tools, to learn to master them.”

It just so happened she agreed with him. “You’ll teach him to use it
and
drive him to the clinic the next time he cuts himself bad enough to need stitches?”

A slow smile curved the mouth that had once fit against hers so perfectly. “My plan is for there not to be a next time.”

“Bowie, you’re a parent now. You need to get used to the concept that there is always a next time. Sometimes I think kids were put on this earth to mess with each and every one of our well-thought-out plans.”

“Okay. I get it.”

“You get what?”

“Yeah, I’ll take him to the clinic
if
he needs stitches again.”

“All right, then. We have a deal.”

“And I want to teach him to whittle, too—not with a pocketknife. For whittling, he’ll use a fixed blade.”

“Oh, I can’t wait.”

“A little heavy on the irony, aren’t you, Glory?”

“Just take your time about it, please. Teach him right.”

“I will, I promise you. I’m also thinking he should have a dog.”

She slanted him a look—and hit him with what she knew. “Good thing you’ve decided to move back to town. He can have a dog at
your
place.”

He scratched his sculpted cheek. “Angie?”

“This is how it works. You tell your brother, he tells his wife, and there’s a very good chance that my sister is going to tell me.”

He folded his hands on the tabletop and stared at them for a moment or two. “I guess I should have figured that.”

“Guess you should have.”

“I did plan to tell you.”

“When?”

“Tonight, right now—given that I managed to work up the nerve.”

She looked into her mug and thought about getting up and brewing a second cup. But in the end, she pushed the mug away and stayed in her seat.

He spoke again, softly. “I was kind of scared that you would be mad about my moving back here.”

She tipped her head to the side and studied his face. He looked hopeful, she thought. That maybe this time she wouldn’t jump all over him? Probably. “I was a little angry at first. But then I thought it over. It’s best for Johnny if you move back to town.”

“I was thinking the same thing.” He pushed back his chair.

She knew he was leaving and she hated how much she wished that he wouldn’t. But then he only went to the counter, got down a glass, filled it with water from the tap and came back to settle into the chair across from her again.

He drank half the water, set it down on the tabletop, turned the glass in a slow circle. “I was surprised when I heard that
you’d
come back to town.”

“You mean five years ago?”

“Yeah. First I got the news that you’d taken Johnny and moved to New York City to work for B.J. as a nanny.” B.J. was his brother Buck’s wife. “I heard you were taking online classes, too, to get a college degree.”

“Who did you hear all that from?”

“Ma sent me letters. And my brothers wrote to me, too.”

“You never sent
me
an address where I could write to you.” She knew she sounded accusing again. So what? She
felt
accusing.

“I didn’t send Ma or my brothers an address, either. At first I didn’t have one to send. But then they sent my half brother Tanner out to find me. He’s a private investigator. Lives in Sacramento?”

She nodded. “I think Brand has mentioned him once or twice.”

“His mother was Lia. She had Tanner and two daughters by Blake.” Bowie smiled but there was little humor in it. “He was a busy guy, dear old Dad.” He kept turning that half-full glass. “So Tanner found me and told me he was telling Ma and my brothers where to get in touch with me. By then, I was thinking I should have told them myself. So I was glad to get their letters. And grateful to hear about you and Johnny, to know that you were getting along all right, managing better without me than you ever did with me around to mess things up for you. Ma asked in one of her letters if she could give you my address. I wrote back and asked if you’d asked for it. She said that you’d told her you didn’t want to hear anything about me. Ma said you told her that if I wanted to contact you, I knew where to find you.”

“That’s right. It’s what I told her.” She would have given anything—a kidney, every last ounce of her pride—to have gotten one letter from him back then. But now, slowly, she was coming to understand what a mess he’d been in those days, that it hadn’t been a simple matter of him snapping out of it and behaving like a normal person. During that time, he really hadn’t been capable of the simple actions that mean so much.

He asked again. “So why did you come back from New York?”

She shrugged. “I got homesick, that’s all. I’m from the Flat. It’s a lot of who I am. My family drives me up the wall, but I missed them so much. And I missed your mamma, too. Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I just had to come home.”

“You ever get that college degree?”

“What? Nobody told you?”

“They didn’t tell me
everything.
And I never had the nerve to ask them. I kind of figured it was one thing if they volunteered stuff about you and Johnny. But as soon as I asked them…” His voice trailed off.

Her throat clutched tight again. “What? Say it.”

He didn’t answer right away. She became certain he wouldn’t. But then, he surprised her. “I didn’t feel I had any right, okay? No right to ask about you when I wasn’t…there for you. Or for Johnny.”

A loose curl of hair kept tickling her cheek. She smoothed it away. “Okay, I guess I get that.”

He braced his elbows on the table, so his strong forearms surrounded both the water glass and the old pocketknife. He leaned in across them, closer to her. “So did you get your degree?”

“Yes, I did. I have a B.A. in business.” She still got a feeling of satisfaction just saying it. “Took six years, but I did it. I graduated last June. And then, a month later, Matteo died.”

He scanned her face. “That must have been brutal.”

“Brutal,” she echoed. “Yeah, that’s a good word for it.” She looked down into her empty mug. “He was so proud of me. It was…such a happy time. I earned my degree. We had found out I was pregnant.…” Her voice was barely a whisper. “And then he died.” She glanced up again. Bowie’s eyes were waiting. She opened her mouth and told him more. “I went to work for him at the hardware store when I got back in town from New York. Matteo was good to me. Patient. Kind. He paid more than minimum wage and gave me health insurance. I was so grateful. And he understood, about my being a single mom. When Johnny got sick, Matteo didn’t get all on my case because I needed a day off. And the first time he asked me out, he was so nervous, just falling all over himself, stammering a little, wondering if maybe I might possibly want to join him for a steak at the Nugget.…” She closed her eyes, let out a low groan. “Oh, what am I doing? Telling you all this. You don’t need to hear this.…”

“Glory, come on, look at me.”

She made herself do it, made herself open her eyes and face him. He gazed back at her, so calm and unruffled, eyes like the ocean on a clear, windless day. So unlike the Bowie she used to know. Unlike…and yet, still the same, deep down somewhere. At the core.

He said, “What you’re saying is nothing I hadn’t already pretty much figured out.”

“Maybe so, but that doesn’t make it any less…oh, I don’t know. Inappropriate, I guess.”

“It’s just the truth, right?”

“Yeah, but still. Can we talk about something else?”

That slow, irresistible smile again. “Sure.”

“Those first checks you sent me?”

“I hope they helped.”

She confessed, “I really needed them. I cashed them, spent them on shoes and groceries, on the essentials.”

“Good, that’s why I sent them. I didn’t have what it took, to come myself, to write you a damn letter now and then. But at least after I started working for Wily, I had a little cash I could contribute.”

“I want to tell you…” She hardly knew how to go on.

“Please, I’m listening.”

“Bowie, I…as the checks got larger, I was sure you must have done something illegal to get that money.”

He shrugged. “Yeah, well, I wasn’t communicating, was I?”

“No, you weren’t.”

“You were in the dark. I guess I’m not surprised you assumed the worst. And I don’t blame you.”

She put her hands over her mouth, let out a pained laugh and then dropped them, palms flat, on the table. “Well,
I
blamed
you.
”

“I kind of gathered that.”

She didn’t know why she wanted him to hear all this. She only knew that it was something she suddenly just
had
to tell him. “After Matteo and I got married, I opened a special savings account. I put every check you sent from then on into it.” She glanced toward the dark window that faced the backyard. “I was afraid to spend it, in case someone showed up to take it back.”

“Well, great.” He sounded sincere. “That means Johnny’s got a head start on his college education.”

“I can’t believe you’re not offended.”

He blew out a breath. “I am, a little. But I’m thinking that’s my problem, not yours.”

She looked at him, amazed all over again at the changes in him. “You’re so…even-tempered now. You always used to be on a hair trigger, always angry. And you always used to boss me around.”

“Well, I tried to. You never were real big on letting anyone tell you what to do—and the truth is, I felt so far beneath you. And I was always afraid that I would lose you. And guess what? I got exactly what I was so scared of. I pushed you away. And I lost you.”

“I just, well, I never…”

“Never, what?”

“Never in my life did I even dream that we might end up sitting at my kitchen table like we are right now, telling each other these things.”

“It was always too damn hard to talk to me,” he said softly. “Wasn’t it?”

“Yeah. I finally realized it was never going to work with us. I accepted that.”

“I know.” It was a simple statement of fact.

“And I have to tell you…”

“Yeah?”

“At first, when you came back, I was just waiting for you to mess up again.”

“Yeah, well, I expected that.”

“And then, because you haven’t messed up, I sometimes find myself wondering what you’ve done with the real Bowie.”

“I
am
the real Bowie.”

She made a show of squinting at him, hard. “You sure?”

He made a low sound, a short, rough laugh. “I still feel a lot of the same bullheaded unreasonable crap I always felt. I just learned that I don’t have to act on every little emotion that gets my heart beating faster. Wily Dunn taught me that. Wily would say,
‘Just ’cause you got feelings, son, that don’t mean you
have
to exercise ’em.’
”