Fix You (43 page)

31

             
M
r. and Mrs. Bancroft brought two other couples with them. They were all in their fifties, rosy-cheeked from the cold, more jovial than any six people had a right to be. They arrived at four on Friday and Jo played bellhop. Jess signed them in, handed over keys, turned down linens and listened to the hum and thump of her upstairs as it was used for the first time. The Bancrofts were in the green room and for a moment, she remembered Chris inside her on top of the crackling green comforter, but she pushed the thought away and smiled at her guests.

             
The men had brandy in the billiards room. The ladies wine on the back sun porch. Jess cooked chicken Florentine pasta and garden salads that Jo served their guests at the round tables in the dining room. Family dinner conversation was stilted as they ate in the kitchen and strained to hear the unfamiliar sounds of voices down the hall. In the last waning fingers of sunlight, Tam and Tyler bundled up and went out into the yard to practice with the Nerf football.

             
At the sink, Jess pulled her eyes from the scene outside the window and watched her sister’s fragile profile; it had always seemed so strange that such a fierce little creature lived inside such a tiny frame. She dried the wet pans that Jess handed over in companionable silence; she’d been doing that all along: holding, bracing, working, supporting, all without complaint.

             
“Jo,” Jess said, a lump suddenly caught in her throat. “Thank you.”

             
She wrinkled her nose. “This towel’s too wet to do much good.”

             
“No, silly.” Jo’s big blue-green eyes swept toward her. “I meant
thank you
.” Her voice and smile trembled. “I couldn’t have done all this without you. Not for a second.”

             
They weren’t hugging sisters, but there was a warm one in Jo’s smile. “You would have done the same for me.”

**

              Night had become a melancholy thing. At night, there was nothing to distract her from the shroud of loneliness that descended. After the Bancrofts and Mercers and Addisons turned off the billiard room flat screen and retired upstairs, once the Waleses went to their cottage, once Tyler was tucked in bed with a kiss and a lingering touch on his smooth forehead, Jess was all alone with her mistakes. And the child growing inside her. And all that its growth would portend. She was having another cup of tea, standing in the blue dark of the kitchen, watching the dew-drenched yard glitter like crystal beneath the security lamp, when she saw a wraith slipping through the shadows toward the house. Her heart caught and her mind filled with possibilities: another PI, an actual peeping tom, a burglar…

             
A light rap on the back door pulled her head around. “Jess, it’s me.” Though muffled, she still recognized Tam’s voice, and exhaled in shaking relief.

             
She let him in with a scowl he probably couldn’t see. “You scared me.”

             
“You don’t get scared,” he countered, moving past her toward the table.

             
“Forget something?”

             
“Zeke.” In the semi-darkness, she saw Willa’s stuffed zebra at the end of the table and wondered why she hadn’t noticed it before. Tam picked it up and the beans in its hooves rattled against one another. “It would’ve been the end of the world to go to bed without him.”

             
She returned to the window and picked up her tea again. That was the thing about melancholy: it didn’t want company.

             
He got halfway back to the door before he decided to intrude. “You alright?”

             
The lights were on in the cottage, the curtains closed; Jo moved by one, just a shadow. “I guess so,” she shrugged.

             
“Uh-huh. I know I just stare into space all the time when I’m alright.”

             
She sighed. “Tam…”

             
He stepped up to the sink and joined in her staring. “I gotta replace that bulb,” he said, and must have meant the coach lamp to the left of the cottage’s front door: it was out.

             
In the rare moments in which they were alone together, Jess was always reminded how little time she spent with Tam. He unnerved her, in a way. She wasn’t frightened of him – his violence had never been something he directed toward Jo, toward the family – but there had always been something of a coiled spring about him. He was intense. At times, like now, he set her nerves on edge, in part because he was as wild and perceptive as a wolf, and that had always bothered her.

             
“What happened to Chris?” he asked when the silence had stretched thin. “Is he coming back?”

             
The memory her mind chose was a dark moment drugged with sleep, his arm heavy across her waist; it was the intimacy she missed: her fingers through his hair, a man’s shoes at her backdoor, a razor on the counter. She swallowed. “I don’t think so.”

             
The corner of his mouth kicked up in a show of regret. “That sucks. He seemed decent.”

             
Jess frowned; he knew she was pregnant, so what was with the casual attitude? “I can’t keep him around just because of the baby,” she said, feeling suddenly indignant. “That would just be stupid.”

             
He shrugged. “Yeah. Probably.”

             
“It would. It’s bad enough I have to tell Tyler he’s gone – no sense having to tell two kids that when he eventually gets sick of us.”

             
He shrugged again and she scowled.

             
“I have no idea how,” she huffed, “I’m going to explain to Tyler that his new brother or sister has a different father. How do you tell a child that? How could he understand?”

             
She didn’t expect an answer – she was just venting at this point – but Tam took a deep breath. “You know,” he said, and his voice got faraway, his face going slack as he tunneled back through his own thoughts.  “I have a really good memory. Not that I’m bragging about that – it’s just true. I remember shit. Too much shit.”

             
Jess took a breath and held it as a note of fear went shivering through the night between them. He was about to tell her something neither of them wanted to hear.

             
“I remember,” he said, and the smile that cut across his face wasn’t a smile at all, “one night when my dad came home drunk. I was seven maybe. Little. I was asleep and Mom’s bedroom door slamming back woke me up. He woke her up screaming; called her a slut. I heard him slap her. She apologized – over and over. He was saying shit that didn’t even make sense. I heard – at the time I didn’t know what I heard, but I figured it out. He raped her that night,” he said as dispassionately as if he’d been commenting on the weather. “He raped her a lot of nights before I was big enough to do anything about it.”

             
Jess pressed a knuckle to her lips.

             
He turned to her, eyes glowing and translucent, bluer than the light that spilled through the window. “There’s things more damaging than divorce,” he said. “A lot worse. And kids can handle a lot more truth than most give them credit for.” He almost smiled. “One day, you’ll be able to tell Tyler that you weren’t like my mom; you got away from your nightmare.”

             
Horror-stricken, she nodded.

             
Tam’s expression twitched. “Do me a favor and don’t repeat that to Jo. She gets all worried about me.”

             
She nodded again.

             
He smiled – a real smile this time – and she didn’t protest when he put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her into a sideways hug. “Hey, Jess?”

             
She blinked hard against the tears welling in her eyes. “What?”

             
“You’re a good mom.”

32

             
T
here were real estate firms, and then there was Waverly. The Atlanta branch of the ultra-exclusive luxury property brokerage firm had a Buckhead address, a posh four-story Palladian mansion for an office, and a security guard on duty on a Sunday evening.

             
“I’m here,” Walt said into his cell as he punched the buzzer to the side of the sweeping glass doors of the airlock. “I’ll call you when I leave.”

             
He disconnected the call and waved up at the security camera. “Walt Walker here to see Dylan Beaumont. I have an appointment.”

             
An electronic beep sounded and the doors glided open; Walt entered, paused to show his ID to the guard on duty, and headed for the great curving stair that led to the second story.

             
In place of the historic oil portraits that would have lined the walls if this were an actual Regency estate, huge prints of available properties decorated his long climb and then the stretch of tile gallery he walked down. Windows offered a dazzling view of the illuminated skylight, the moon a harvest sickle hanging above. Walt clenched and relaxed his clammy hands, nervous with this new sense of conviction he carried.

             
Dylan’s office was halfway down the corridor on the left, and stood ajar. Walt took a deep breath, rapped once, and saw himself in.

             
His dark head bent over a desk cluttered with paperwork, Dylan was slow in acknowledging him. When he did, he was a harried, lined semblance of his usual self: collar loose and rumpled, hair disheveled. “You’re late.”

             
Walt nodded an apology and dropped into one of the two chairs across from the desk. “It took me longer than I thought to pull together what I needed.” He had a file folder tucked under his arm and placed it on the desk between them. “See what you think.”

             
Dylan raked a hand through his hair and exhaled like he was exhausted; Walt knew the guy’s mistress was gone, and he supposed wrestling pent-up mental illness could be tiring. “I’m surprised you guys have waited so long to look into a vacation property,” he said, opening the folder. “I pulled several listings already. Just some small places in the…”

             
He trailed off when his gaze fell on the folder’s contents: a dozen glossy ten-by-nines taken through a telephoto lens. “What –  ”

             
“You inspired me,” Walt said, feeling a sick sort of satisfied smile tug at his lips. “Since he was no longer on your payroll, your PI Roger was glad to pick up a new client.”

             
All the color leeched from Dylan’s face. He fumbled through the photos; through gaps in the haphazard drapes, close-ups of slave-girl Kim in her chains and collars, and all the things Dylan had done to her, were unmistakable and revolting.

             
“He wasn’t averse to climbing that tree at the edge of your parking lot, which was how he got the bedroom shots,” Walt explained. “And he was nice enough to make me duplicates, so if you’re thinking of destroying those, it won’t do any good.”

             
Jaw slack, Dylan glanced up at him. A high, red blush burst along his white cheekbones. Shock kept his rage at bay. “Why…why would I destroy them?” His brows slanted low over his eyes. “Like I give a shit if you have some pictures.”

             
“You should.”

             
“Why?”

             
Walt leaned back in his chair. “What would your bosses think if they saw these?”

             
The muscles in Dylan’s throat worked as he swallowed.

             
“Or, even worse, your clients? You see, Dylan, no matter how you’ve rationalized it in your mind, people don’t take well to learning about the private lives of perverts. Why would anyone want to buy a luxury ski cabin from someone who chains up women for fun? Who left his wife and kid for a glorified sex toy?”

             
Dylan swallowed again; a fine sheen of sweat broke out across his forehead. “What do you want?”

             
“Sign the divorce papers. Give Jess everything she wants – the settlement, the alimony: everything. She can have as many contractors as she wants and it won’t ever make up for your sins. Sign the papers,” Walt ordered, “or I’ll ruin your life.”

33

              “
J
essie, you in here?”

             
“Yes!” She called, voice echoing, as she continued to wind up the vacuum cord.

             
Randy was about as graceful as a water buffalo as he came tromping down the back hall and into the gallery where she was tidying. He was dressed for his trip with Tyler to the Falcons game in jeans and sweatshirt, hair sticking up like he hadn’t bothered to shower that morning.

             
“Hey, sweetheart.”

             
“Hey, Dad.” She pulled the dust rag from her back pocket and attacked a spot she’d missed on the antique sideboard.

             
“Where’s your sister? Are you supposed to be working this hard?”

             
“She’s on bathroom duty upstairs. We’ve got our second string of guests checking in at noon and…” She frowned as she polished the old walnut tabletop and turned to cast a glance back over her shoulder at her dad. “What do you mean ‘working this hard’? Did Mom…?” She sighed. “She told you that I’m pregnant, didn’t she?”

             
He rubbed at the back of his neck and looked embarrassed. “Yeah.”

             
“There’s no such thing as privacy in this family,” she lamented. “Can I expect a lecture?”

             
He raised his hands. “That’s not my department.” He wanted to say something, though: she could tell he did. “But what happened to Chris?”

             
Jess wondered if she would ever stop sighing. This was the part her father would never understand, so she dusted the mantel clock on the sideboard while she explained. “I’ve told him about the baby. He can be a part of its life if he wants to.”

             
Randy snorted. “Its life? What about your life?”

             
She wished, more than anything, that her heart would stop squeezing whenever someone mentioned him. “My life is too complicated already.”

             
“How’s raising two kids by yourself gonna make it
less
complicated?” he asked gently.

             
But not gently enough. Jess felt her hackles rise. “I do not have the time or patience to teach some overgrown man-child how to be a father,” she snapped, “much less deal with the fallout when he bails.”

             
Again, Randy wanted to say something; the silence was weighty. But he said, “Tyler in his room?” and backed away from her.

             
“Yes.”

             
“We’ll be back by dinner, then.”

             
She buffed the porcelain clock frame until she could see her reflection in it; there were tears glimmering in her eyes.

**

              “It looks fine to me.” Chris clicked off his flashlight and stood; he’d been crouched, peering into the cabinet that housed the plumbing for Ellie Walker’s basement sink. “There’s no water down here. Paige said it was leaking?”

             
Ellie stood in the threshold, pretty as always in chocolate skinny jeans and floral top. She fiddled with a thumbnail and looked…shifty…almost. On edge. Her gray eyes were a little big and guilty. “Well, you know Paige,” she shrugged and forced a nervous, twittering laugh, “she’s got an imagination.”

             
“Uh-huh.” Chris stowed his flashlight, unconvinced. “Was that all?”

             
“Could you,” she made a face that wasn’t a smile, “check again? You know, just to make sure you were thorough enough.”

             
He liked her, he really did, and her husband was the kind of guy he’d started to imagine could be one of his new brothers-in-law, but with a lima bean in his back pocket and a chronic case of anxious indigestion, he didn’t have much patience for games. “It’s not leaking, Ellie.”

             
Her shoulders sagged. “I know it’s not.” The look she flashed up to him was full of apology. “I’m sorry, Chris, there was nothing wrong with the sink. I just wanted to get you here.”

             
“Why?”

             
She winced. “I agreed to be an accomplice.”

             
He frowned. “To who?”

             
Randy Walker was upstairs in the kitchen, and to make matters worse, he had Tyler with him. The last thing Chris wanted was to have to tell the kid that he’d been kicked out on his ass by his mom. But there was no getting away.

             
“Chris!” Tyler nearly shouted, and rushed to him. “Hi! Where’ve you been? I wanted to show you what I made at school, but you haven’t been at home. Where’d you go? You wanna see the car I made? It’s cool.
Wanna see
?”

             
He wasn’t proof against the nearly incoherent string of questions because, he realized with a pang, he’d missed the little guy. It wasn’t fair. Jess had presented him with this whole family picture – his own child included – and then snatched it away again. He wanted to hate her for it, but he couldn’t.

             
“Hey, kid.” He dropped a hand on top of his head, onto the super soft hair that gleamed like seal hide. “Yeah, I wanna see.” His eyes swept from Tyler’s beaming face across the room to his grandfather’s stern one. “But I’m guessing your grandpa wants to talk to me.” Randy nodded. “In a minute?”

             
Tyler deflated, but said, “
Okay
.”

             
“Come on, sweetie.” Ellie held out a hand to him. “Uncle Jordie’s got a football outside.”

             
When they were gone, Chris folded his arms and braced himself for what he expected to be a righteous paternal tirade. He figured it didn’t matter how old the girl was or that she’d been married before: knocking a man’s daughter up was a serious offense.

             
“Afternoon,” Randy greeted, hands going in his jeans pockets. “Don’t be mad at little Ellie – this wasn’t her idea.”

             
“Mad?” Chris snorted. “I’m flattered any of you even have the nerve to speak to me.”

             
Randy tilted his head in acknowledgement. “You
did
knock up my girl. I’m probably supposed to be pissed about that.”

             
“Probably.”

             
“But I’m gonna take a wild guess and say you weren’t the one who called things off. Am I right?”

             
“You wouldn’t think a woman that skinny could push so hard.”

             
Randy shook his head and leaned back against the counter behind him. Chris didn’t want a heart-to-heart, but had a sinking suspicion that’s what he was about to get. “Of all my kids,” he said in a tired voice, “Jessie’s the one I don’t understand. The boys were easy. Jo was easy. But Jess…” he sighed, “she was always such a girl. I couldn’t throw the ball around with her. I didn’t ever know how to get close to her.” He rubbed at the back of his neck and twitched a humorless grin. “Maybe it’s my fault she ended up with a prick like Dylan; I didn’t spend enough time with her.”

             
Chris didn’t have an answer for that, but he felt sure that, whatever her hangups, Jess didn’t have daddy issues.

             
“I like you,” Randy said, surprising him. “I want to, anyway.” His look became pointed; had he been in his twenties and greenbroke, Chris might have squirmed beneath it. “I’d like to think you really care about her.”

             
“I do.”

             
A silent understanding passed between them: an acknowledged declaration of feelings for the same beautiful girl, things neither of them would voice to one another, but wanted to be made known. The mid-morning sun fell in through the windows in thick shafts and Chris wished he was in Jessica’s kitchen, in that sunlight.

             
“Don’t give up on her yet,” Randy said and it sounded like a request. “Dylan did her so wrong and she’s still shook up. Just, don’t quit yet.”

             
“I don’t plan on it.”

**

              “Dinner was lovely, dear,” Jeanette Gardner said as Jess pressed a stack of clean towels into her arms. “I can’t remember the last time I had gnocchi.”

             
Jess smiled at the praise for her cooking – but it was halfhearted. Their guests were of the delightful variety: the kind who loved the inn’s charm and would no doubt recommend the place to all their friends. But Jess was too twisted inside to enjoy much of anything – not even the idea that her house might be saved from foreclosure by success. As it turned out, success wasn’t what she’d been craving all along.

             
“You love me,”
Chris had said and, damn it, she did. The truth of that was heartbreaking.

             
“Goodnight,” she wished Jeanette. “If you need anything else, just ring the office line.”

             
As Jeanette went up the main staircase with her towels, headlights came tumbling up the drive, flashing through the windows: Dad and Tyler. Jess went into the kitchen to meet them and caught the rapid-fire snatch of Tyler’s voice as he came spilling in from the smoke-smelling night.

             
“…so cool! Wasn’t it cool, Papa? And did you see when he…?”

             
“Hey, guys,” she greeted, glad to see him bright-faced and bubbling.

             
Tyler dragged his stocking cap off his head, hair prickling with static cling in its wake. His dark eyes were sparkling as he tipped his head back and told her, “Guess who we saw today?”

             
Behind him, Randy toed the back door shut and stuffed his hands in his jeans pockets.

             
She smoothed his hair to no avail. “Who?”

             
“Chris!”

             
Her heart lurched. She shot her dad a death glare that he avoided.

             
“He was at Aunt Ellie’s house.”

             
Jess had to take a deep breath before she could respond. “Really?”

             
“Yeah.” Tyler was beaming. “He played football with me. Hey, Mama, is he gonna live here anymore?” He sobered. “Aren’t you guys friends anymore?”

             
“We…” Her tongue was too dry and her mind spinning too quickly for any kind of real response.

             
Randy cleared his throat. “Why don’t you go wash up, sport? I gotta talk to your mom a minute.”

             
Tyler sighed. “Everybody always wants to
talk
,” he grumbled, but trooped to his room, untied shoelaces clacking against the floor.

             
Jess’s stomach rolled and she realized that, for the first time in her life, she couldn’t face her father. She also couldn’t keep standing, either. She snatched up the tablecloth she’d been mending and sewing kit from the counter, and fell into a chair. “Thanks for taking him to the game,” she said as Randy pulled out the chair at the foot of the table. “But I’m gonna have to ask you to stop getting his hopes up taking him to see Chris.”

             
“Honey,” he sighed. “Why are you so damn angry?”

             
“I’m not.” She jabbed the needle through the fabric and stabbed herself. It hurt – it wasn’t screw-through-the-foot painful, but just the comparison was too much. Chris was
everywhere
. She sucked her fingertip into her mouth and closed her eyes.

             
“Jessie,” he said in the voice he’d used when she’d been a little girl: the skinned-knee voice. “You hate the world, darlin’.”

             
“I hate
men
,” she corrected, her voice a horrible, shaking semblance of what she wanted it to be. “All they do is
take
and
leave
.”

             
“Aw, c’mon. Don’t be bitter like that. You aren’t that way.”

             
She knotted her hands in the tablecloth and felt tears pushing at her eyelids. “Yes I am,” she insisted, not caring how petulant she sounded. “I have a right to be.”

             
“Hon.” He touched her arm and she ducked away. “We can talk shit about Dylan all you want, ‘cause I never liked the bastard. But Chris didn’t ‘take’ and he didn’t ‘leave.’ I went to see him today so I could figure that out for myself. And you know what I saw?”

             
She forced her eyes open, blinking hard, and threw him a guarded look. The last thing she cared about in the moment was her dad’s assessment of the man who’d impregnated her. “What?”