His Best Friend's Baby (20 page)

“No.” Ron wiped the corner of his mouth. “We never thought she’d be living with you.”

Suddenly Julia wanted nothing more than to clear the record. To make the Adamses understand what they’d done to Mitch and especially to Jesse with all their blindness and blame. And if Jesse didn’t have the guts to do it, she did.

The old Julia, the one who’d arrived in New Springs, wouldn’t have been able to stand up for the man she loved against the parents of the man she’d married. She would have tap¬ danced, made promises, placated and compromised. She would have denied herself, buried her wants deep in places she’d forget about, just to keep the peace.

She wasn’t that Julia anymore.

“You mean the man that killed Mitch, don’t you?” Julia asked, deliberately goading them.
If Jesse wouldn’t fight, she would. She would fight for both of them.

Ron shook his head. “I understand war better than my wife. I know there was no way you could have caused that crash.”

“Why so mad then, Ron? Is it because Mitch followed Jesse into the army?” Julia asked. “That he didn’t go to school and become a doctor or a lawyer? Was it the trouble they got into high school? Your son was the car thief, not Jesse. He was the one who drank too much—”

“I know what my son was,” Ron nearly yelled. “You think I didn’t raise that boy and see the trouble in him. But we had it under control.
We
were in control until you came along.” He pointed at Jesse. “You came along and helped him, you took the blame and listened to his lies and let it all happen. You let him be the worst of himself and that is how you killed him!”

The ensuing silence was thick.
Ron knew
, was all Julia could think. He knew about Mitch. She turned to face Jesse, who seemed as dumbfounded as she was.

“And you’re going to do it all over again with Julia and her boy,” Ron said. “She’ll never go to school, she’ll never want more for herself
with you here. You are just like your mother, Jesse. And look what she did to your family.”

Anything Julia might have said was crushed under the terrible injustice of what Ron saddled Jesse with. In one fell swoop he’d labeled both of them lost causes.

She opened her mouth, but Jesse, who’d taken all of their abuse, stepped forward in her defense before she could make a single sound.

“I’m leaving, Ron. You don’t have to worry.” He moved to shut the door in their faces, but Agnes came to life and stepped farther in the doorway.

She held out a shaking hand, a letter clenched in her fist. “Here is your blood money. I am curious to see how much the government thinks Mitch Adams was worth. More than you, you whore. Your husband is dead and you’re playing house with the man who killed him!”

Jesse stepped between Julia and Agnes. Her protector and she wanted to weep. Too late, she thought. It’s all just too late.

“Your fight is with me, Agnes. Not Julia.”

“You.” Agnes breathed fire. “You have always wanted what Mitch had. You’ve always been jealous of my boy.” She turned back to Julia.
“He doesn’t really want you,” she snapped. “He just wants you because you were Mitch’s.”

“That’s not true,” Jesse whispered. Julia’s eyes met his and she could read the truth in them, the utter devastation of his feelings for her. “I’ve always wanted you for you. Mitch has nothing to do with it.”

He touched her cheek and her ebbing confidence flowed back into her, along with the fresh sense of what she was losing in Jesse. Grief sliced through her that Jesse would rather lose her than defend himself.

“He has everything to do with it,” she whispered. “You’re choosing him over me.”

Jesse opened his mouth to deny it, but she couldn’t stomach any more denial. She was after the truth now.

Julia stepped around Jesse, hoping to slay one dragon for his sake, and her own. “I’ve kept my mouth shut for a long time about your son, but I can’t do it anymore. Mitch was no saint, Agnes.”

“How dare you try—”

“He cheated on me, Agnes. A dozen times. He lied. He drank too much and he gambled. He didn’t take care of us. He fed us to the wolves. He did the same thing to Jesse when they were young.”

She turned to Jesse for backup. His flesh and body stood there, but he’d already left and suddenly she knew where she went wrong.

He was right, her forgiveness was never going to save him. He didn’t need it.

She suddenly felt as though she’d been dipped in ice water. A chill unlike anything she’d ever felt covered her, filled her.

“What do you need, Jesse?” she asked, ignoring Agnes. “Do you need this woman to forgive you?” She pointed at Agnes. “Will that free you? Make you better?”

“I will never forgive you!” Agnes yelled.

Julia shrugged. “Well, there’s your answer, Jesse. She’s not going to forgive you. So you’re just going to have to keep paying for the sin of being Mitch Adams’ friend for the rest of your life.”

“He killed Mitch. That’s his sin.”

Julia yanked the envelope from the woman’s fist. “Your hothead son engaged the enemy and because of that they crashed.”

“I don’t believe you,” Agnes cried.

“Of course you don’t. I’m the lying, cheating whore your son never loved.” She took a deep breath and finally got her rampaging emotions under control. “If you ever want to see your
grandson again, you’ll leave now. Before you do something that I could press charges against.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Pretty sure I would.”

“Agnes, let’s go,” Ron said, pulling his wife from the doorway. “We don’t want to jeopardize our relationship with Ben.”

They turned away and Julia slammed the door shut. She faced Jesse, shaking her head.

“I thought I could reach you. But no one can, can they? Even if Mitch came back from the dead, you’d still find a way to be responsible.”

“Julia, it’s not that simple.”

“Of course not.” She headed for the kitchen. All her mistakes were so clear now, like footsteps in snow. She’d thought she was taking care of herself, she’d thought she’d managed independence after years of feeling like Mitch’s chattel. But she’d relied on Jesse far more than she’d ever relied on Mitch. Jesse took care of her son. He drove them around town. He let them stay in his house. She wasn’t taking care of herself, she was falling right into another earthquake. She’d left the Adams nightmare for a worse one with Jesse.

It really was time for her to stand on her own two feet.

She could call a cab and get a hotel room out by the highway until she found an apartment. Then she would be done with Jesse Filmore and his guilt and her terrible need for him that came hand in hand with her love for him.

She grabbed her purse and took out her phone, but before she could dial he grabbed the phone, gripping her hand, hard.

“Julia, please, I want to talk—”

“Let me go,” she said, unable to look him in the eye. This distant battered man could break her heart and that was one thing she didn’t need right now. “I need to make a call.”

“Who are you calling?”

“A cab.”

“Julia, you don’t have to leave.”

She jerked her hand and cell phone away from him and called information for the number of the only cab company in New Springs.

Twenty minutes. She had twenty minutes to pack, wake her son and rip the skin from her body.

Why did love have to hurt so much?

Jesse stood in the hallway in front of her son’s room, his arms across his chest like a sentinel.

“I want to talk to you.”

“There’s nothing to say,” she sighed. “You’re leaving.”

“But I don’t want to end it this way,” he said.

“Well, I don’t want to end it, so neither of us are happy.” She pushed past him and crept into the room. She packed as quietly as she could, hoping to keep Ben asleep.

When she crept back out, Jesse was still there. She walked past him with her packed suitcase and diaper bag.

She resolved at that moment, setting her son’s diaper bag on the ground by the door, that her life would no longer be dictated by anyone else. Her life as a leaf in other people’s streams was over.

She was here in New Springs and she would stay. Make a life for herself. She had friends. A job she loved. And she would
not
pine after Jesse Filmore. She would not create dreams of what her life might have been if he’d loved her as much as she loved him.

She brushed the hair from her eyes and marveled at how calm she felt. No tears. No hysteria. A bone-deep pain radiated through her body, but she could manage it. She could manage her own pain far more than she could handle Jesse’s.

She turned and found him watching her, looking like a man being stretched past endurance.

She smiled tremulously. “Good luck to you, Jesse.”

“Julia—” He gasped, reaching for her.

She shook her head and held up her hand to stop him. If he touched her, this equilibrium might rupture like a popped balloon.

“I am so glad that our paths crossed again.” She swallowed. “I hope that you find some happiness in San Diego. I hope—” She took a big breath of air, seeing so clearly what Jesse was too pained to see. “I hope you can forgive yourself for those things that happened to you that were out of your control. I hope you can forgive yourself for Mitch and those men in the crash.”

“My forgiveness seems pretty irrelevant,” he said, his voice low and broken. “Where are you going?”

“I’m not going to tell you that, Jesse.” Her brain, ignored for too long in these sorts of decisions, overruled her heart. “I won’t have you come stumbling back into my life. I can’t take it. My heart is pretty battered.” She tried to smile, but couldn’t.

She could see the effect of the accident on his body, on his entire life, like a bullet wound. It was as clear as all the mistakes she had made. They were two people crashing into each other, propelled by human error, bad luck and disaster. She’d been foolish to think they stood a chance.

Risking terrible trauma, she reached out and stroked his face one last time, reveling in the rough grosgrain of his beard. “You deserve better,” she whispered, a terrible echo of his words to her a million years ago. A car honked outside and she gathered her son, her heart and every dream she’d ever hung on Jesse Filmore before setting out to make her own way.

AS MUCH AS
Julia wished she could reject it, or put it in the bank and never touch it, the insurance check was a godsend. A hundred thousand dollars. More money than she’d ever seen in her life. She was dumbfounded by that much money. She put most of it in trust for Ben and his future. With the rest she was going to buy a house. Something small, maybe a new one out by the rec center. But she didn’t want to rush into anything. So she spent one night at the Motel 6 and then she moved to a two-
bedroom apartment, close to the nursery, with south-facing windows and a view of the mountains.

She bought some furniture with Amanda and Rachel’s help. They hung curtains and shelves and told Mac where to put the new overstuffed chair she loved along with the rest of the heavy furniture. The entire time all of them avoided mentioning Jesse’s name. But he was there, hovering in the air around them. He was in Rachel’s sad eyes, and Mac’s slightly bent shoulders. They had all been defeated by the stubborn grip Jesse kept on his pain. They were a survivor’s group.

She ordered pizza for everyone as a thank-you and they sat at her new kitchen table and ate off her new-to-her plates.

“Your house rocks, Julia,” Amanda said and Julia lifted her glass of Sprite, triumphant.

“I’ll drink to that.”

Ben, sitting in a booster seat, lifted his hands high over his head, as if his cheerful toddler soul that kept Julia on her feet when she wanted to curl up and die had grown, was in fact growing, filling the room. Their new house.

“Mama!” he shouted.

“Hear, hear,” Mac said, his blue eyes sad, and
they all raised their glasses and Julia figured, of all her fresh starts and new beginnings, this one, as painful as it was, had to be her favorite.

But that night she dreamed of Jesse. The old dreams, in which he had holes in his chest and his eyes were dead. She woke up with a gasp and painful lurch of heart.

I can’t save him
, she reminded herself.
He
has to do that himself
.

But it didn’t stop her loving him and she wondered, staring out her dark window to the mountains, when that would end.

She feared never.

JESSE WORKED
like a man possessed. His body ached and burned with old and new wounds. The first night Julia and Ben were gone, he took some of the pain medication that he had left—pain medication he hadn’t touched in weeks because of Julia and Ben. That night his dreams of her, of her body, her kiss, the cool brush of her fingers, were torture, so the next morning he dumped the meds out.

He worked. Four days later the roof was half-finished, but he couldn’t sweat or beat out his memories and his quickly gathering regrets.

“Looks good!”

Jesse peered over edge of the roof and saw Mac standing on his lawn, his hands in his pockets.

“Thanks.” Jesse stood, braced himself when the blood rushed to his head and then carefully made his way down the ladder. It’d been four
days since Julia had left and he wanted to pump Mac for information.

“You’ve been pretty busy,” Mac said, holding the ladder as Jesse stepped off the bottom rung. He wiped his filthy hands on hisT-shirt and shook Mac’s palm. It was his first contact with another person in four days and he was surprised at how good the solid warm grip of his old friend felt. “You look like shit, though. Do you ever sleep?”

“Not much.” Jesse managed to laugh a little. “How is Rachel?”

“Happy. Hungry.” Mac shrugged. “Life is good.”

Jesse smiled. Gladness, like some kind of seed buried under all his stupid years of pigheadedness, bloomed in his gut.

“Come by for dinner and see for yourself.”

“I’ve got a lot of work to do.” Jesse lifted a hand toward the roof. The truth was, stepping inside of his sister’s happy house wasn’t something he could deal with. His brush with the land of the living had proved disastrous. He was better on the roof. Alone.

“Working yourself to death or making yourself miserable isn’t going to change anything, Jesse. Mitch will still be dead.”

“I know, Mac. But how am I supposed to live
in this town a block away from his parents? How am I supposed to live with his widow? His son? I mean, it’s torture.”

“More torture than it is living without her?”

His words slid in between Jesse’s flesh and bone and settled in his gut like the hard cold weight of truth.

“Where’s Julia?” Jesse asked.

“She’s got an apartment.”

“Where?”

“She asked us not to tell you, Jesse. She’s pretty fragile and if you show up on her doorstep—”

“Why the hell does everyone think she’s fragile?”

“Because she does.” Mac shrugged. “Or used to, anyway.”

“Well, she’s never been the best judge of character,” he muttered. He felt small and evil, as though a black spill of bitterness coated his entire body.

“What would it matter, Jesse?” Mac tilted his head and regarded him carefully. “I mean, even if you did know where she was, what would you do about it?”

“Make sure she’s okay.”

“She’s okay, you can rest easy.”

Jesse nearly laughed.
Rest easy
. Right. Not until he was gone from this place. Away from this house and its old memories that had been slicked over by those new ones created by Julia and Ben.

This house was haunted.

He swallowed. “Does she ask about me?” If Mac said yes, he’d run to her. He’d find her no matter what it took.

“No.” Mac sighed, as if knowing that was the opposite of what Jesse needed to hear. “She’s trying to get over you.”

Jesse nodded, eviscerated. “That’s for the best.”

“Jesse, man, if you love her…” Mac trailed off and Jesse waited, as if maybe Mac would have some kind of answer for him. But he didn’t say anything, never finished the thought, and Jesse knew there was no easy answer.

“She’s better off without me, Mac. She needs to rebuild her life.”

“Why can’t you be a part of that?”

“How can I? I’m the past. I’m what she needs to get over. I’m Mitch’s best friend.”

“She didn’t seem to care.”

“Well, I do. Maybe I need to get over this. Maybe she’s part of the past that I need to forget.” He lied, and they both knew it.

“What are you doing here, Mac?” Jesse asked. He turned the old spigot on by the side of the house and splashed lukewarm water over his neck. Anything to cool down.

“We’re worried about you,” he said. “Rachel asked me to come by.”

“Tell Rachel I’m fine. I’m fixing the roof.”

“You could tell her yourself on Sunday. Steaks again, maybe some cold beer—”

Jesse shook his head. It wasn’t for him. Sunday family dinners. The Filmores didn’t have any business even pretending such things.

“No thanks,” he said.

“But—”

“I can’t, Mac. Just try to understand.” He stared Mac in the eye for a long time, willing him to catch on that he just needed to be alone.

The way he should have stayed all along.

Finally Mac nodded. “We’re here when you need us, Jesse.”

Jesse started up the ladder away from this vicious humanity, but stopped. Compelled by all the changes he’d gone through in the last few months, he turned and grabbed Mac hard in his arms.

“Thank you,” he told him. “Thanks for everything you’ve ever done for me.”

Before Mac could say anything, Jesse was back up the ladder to the roof where, as long as he worked until he collapsed, the ghosts never reached him.

“The cedar shake was a nice touch, Jesse.” JoBeth Miller, a girl he vaguely remembered as “easy” in high school, was now his real estate agent.

She was going over his house—and him—with a mercenary eye. Her skirt was too tight, too short and he wondered if she were still easy. Maybe he could erase the scent of Julia from his mind with another woman. But as soon as he thought it, he rejected it.

“You’ve increased the value by at least a couple grand. Now if you wanted to replace this floor—”

She seemed prepared to launch into the various monetary benefits to tearing up cracked linoleum, but he stopped her before she could get far. “The kitchen floor is fine. I want the
house sold by the end of the week,” he said. “At the latest.”

“Well, it’s a buyer’s market in this town. Always has been—no one is really dying to live in New Springs. It might take a bit longer.”

“Fine, but I am only here until the end of the week.”

She pouted, an immature gesture left over from her adolescent years. “Well, that’s too bad, Jesse. We’ve just gotten reacquainted.” She touched his arm and he had to step away or possibly wrench that arm from its socket.

“Sell this house, that’s all I want.”

She blinked at him, her eyelashes heavy with mascara and he realized he’d never seen Julia wear makeup. Ever.

The thought, like Mike McGuire’s fist to his stomach, made him short of breath. For a moment he wished he were the kind of man who stuck around, accompanied her to the big events that required makeup. He imagined her in candlelight, a black dress, red lips.

“Sure, Jesse.” JoBeth ripped him from his thoughts. She tugged on her skirt as if suddenly aware of how inappropriate it was. “We’ll get it listed tomorrow morning.”

He put his hand on the doorknob. “Thanks,” he
muttered, slightly ashamed of his behavior but not inclined to change it. He swung open the door to let JoBeth out. On the step outside, his hand poised to ring the doorbell, stood Caleb Gomez.

Beside Jesse, JoBeth gasped. Or maybe it was Jesse. He stood, too numb to be sure.

Caleb was a grisly sight, to be sure.

Knotted and twisted red scar tissue licked up Caleb’s neck and grazed his right cheek. He was thin, like any man coming home from the hospital would be. He leaned heavily against a cane and his opposite hand was a thick flipper of surgical gauze.

“Jesse Filmore?” the horrific vision asked.

“Yeah,” Jesse nodded. JoBeth couldn’t run out the door fast enough. As she left, Caleb bowed slightly like a macabre puppet tipping an imaginary hat.

“You need a woman with a bit more stomach than that one.” Caleb pivoted and grinned at him. The devil was in Caleb’s eyes. Jesse would never forget finding him, tortured, starved and left to die in that Iraqi prison. Jesse had expected to retrieve a shell of a man, but Caleb had turned to him and muttered through cracked, black lips, “You better be John-damn-Wayne with the cavalry.”

“A little scar tissue and she was about to puke on me.” Caleb smirked.

“I thought—”

“I was dead? In a coma? Yes to both, but I’m tougher than I look.” His eyes lost their shine. His wit seemingly deserting him. He gestured into the house with his wounded hand. “Can I come in?”

“Yes, yes.” Jesse leaped out of the way. “You want some water?”

“Do you have a beer? Oh, sweet beer.” He moaned in dramatic ecstasy.

“Sadly, no.” For once Jesse wished he were the kind of man who did keep beer around the house.

“It’s just as well.”

“The pain meds?” Jesse couldn’t help a sympathetic smile.

“I’m all for drug-enhanced good times but the meds with beer give me terrible dreams—”

Jesse nodded. “I know.”

“I wouldn’t say no to that water.” He gestured to the open door behind him. “Never thought I’d end up in a desert again.”

Jesse went into the kitchen for the water. By the time he got back to the living room, Caleb was already sprawled across the couch with his shoe off.

“Sorry.” He pointed at his foot with the cane.
“But the swelling hasn’t gone down and those shoes are killing me.”

“What are you doing here?” Jesse asked. He lowered himself into his father’s old chair, his eyes never leaving Caleb. He felt as though he stood in the presence of a miracle. Some heaven-sent, foul-mouthed apparition. “I mean, weren’t you just in a coma?”

He’d been too chickenshit to keep checking up on Caleb. Too scared to see the body count from the accident go up by one more.

“Miracles of modern medicine, Jesse.” Caleb drank from the bottle of water, his good cheer contradicting the fine trembling in his hand.

Jesse looked away in empathy. He’d hated the way doctors and nurses stared at him the whole time he was hospitalized, rushing to clean his small spills, to mop his face and the front of his gown as if he were a child, or worse, an old man.

“You’re not an easy man to find,” Caleb said. “Luckily, your niece was ready to sell your secrets.”

“Amanda?”

“I’d watch out for her.” Caleb smiled, the scar tissue tightening, gleaming in the late
morning sunshine. “She’s gonna set the world on fire.”

Jesse could only blink. Oddly enough all he felt was admiration for his niece, no resentment at all.

“So, what are you doing here? I mean it’s great. I’m glad you’re okay, but do you need something?”

Caleb stared at him for a long time and then, finally laughed, a boisterous, loud guffaw completely at odds with the shocking state of his body.

“You saved my life, Jesse Filmore. I would not be alive at this moment if you hadn’t pulled me from that prison and then pulled me from that helicopter. Did you honestly think I wasn’t going to track you down and offer my pitifully small thanks?”

Jesse stood. “You didn’t have to. I was just—”

“So help me, man, if you say you were just doing your job I’ll hit you with my cane. You saved my life. My mother is ready to canonize you.”

“I don’t need your thanks.” He meant it. He didn’t really want it. He looked at Caleb’s injuries and wondered how the man could sit
in this house and not blame Jesse for some of what had happened to him.

“Well, I sure as hell need to give it to you.” Caleb sat up.

“Okay.” Jesse held out his hand, thinking to stop Caleb from getting up but then thought better of it.
Let the guy do what he wants, he’s
earned it
. “You’re welcome.”

God, how ridiculous did that sound? How inadequate.

“I’m sorry about your men. I understand the pilot was a friend of yours.”

Jesse nodded, his throat too thick for words. For breath.

“My mother lights candles three times a day for those men.”

Jesse almost laughed again, caught on some ragged edge of emotion. Visions of Dave with his attitude and cocky grin, Artie with his terrible sunburns and bad jokes, and Mitch flooded what part of his brain wasn’t numbed by Caleb’s appearance on his doorstep. “Good,” he said. “They need it.”

“I understand you’ve retired, with honors.”

Jesse nodded.

“Silver Star and the Purple Heart and—”

“I retired,” Jesse managed to say, stopping
the list of awards he’d earned because he’d been the only one alive to take them.

“I’d like to do a story.”

“On the accident?”

“On the accident.” Caleb nodded. “And you.” His eyes taunted Jesse and dared him.

“No comment,” he growled.

Caleb shook his head. “You rescued me from an Iraqi prison.”

“I did my job.”

“You pulled me from a burning helicopter.”

“No story.”

“Well, I don’t really need your permission.”

Jesse laughed. “Then why bother coming here?”

“Your niece thinks you blame yourself for the accident. And let me tell you, man, that better be the overactive imagination of a sixteen-year-old because I never in my life heard such melodramatic bullshit.”

Ice replaced blood in his body. He stood, frozen to the spot. “I appreciate your thanks, but maybe you should go—”

Caleb dug through his back pocket and finally fished out a notebook. He flipped it open and searched through a few pages.

“The helicopter was six minutes late, right?”

Jesse nodded.

“According to Artie, who was trying to keep me alive while you fought with the pilot, they were late because they fired on the enemy.”

“I know, they fired back when—”

“No, Jesse. They fired first.”

Silence. The beat of his heart, the gasp and wheeze of Wain sleeping in the corner was the soundtrack for the reshuffling of memory and detail that made up that night.

“Artie said that Dave fired on his own. And Mitch circled around to take another pass at the enemy. That’s when they got hit. I think Artie called them trigger-happy sons of a bitches, but I can’t be sure. Artie was mad, I know that. Artie said if the bird went down it was Mitch and Dave’s fault.”