Keep You (24 page)

             
A shower and a guided van tour through Cong later – in which he made note of two pubs that warranted visits a la the shuttle service at a later time – he stumbled upon the actual library, a charming little leprechaun of a woman named Maddie, and a leather bound copy of
Great Expectations
. He wasn’t necessarily a fan of Dickens, but something about the methodical, endless way he wrote was calming. It was nice to read about the life of someone who had it worse than he did. Tam camped out in the bar, in one of the striped chairs, long legs stretched out in front of him, a pint of Guinness on the table, afternoon sunlight filtering in over his shoulder. The other patrons were talking quietly to themselves, their voices a low murmur like a water fountain. Someone was smoking a cigar. For a little while, Ireland was exactly where he wanted to be.

             
The sound of a female voice asking for a single malt Scotch and a glass of sauvignon blanc up at the bar pulled his eyes away from the page and he saw Jess leaning against the polished top, in jeans and a loose white sweater, damp hair tied up in a knot on her head. She must have already known that he was there because when she took her drinks from the bartender, she turned and headed straight for him.

             
Tam marked his place in the book with a finger and closed the cover. “As a dedicated groomsman,” he said as she sat down across from him, “I’m gonna have to ask you to return to the bride.”

             
“Screw you,” Jess said as she settled back in her chair and took a sip of her wine. “I did my bit for the day. Once the hubs washes the golf course stink off him, we’re having some alone time, damn it.” Her voice was always so even, it added a layer of comedy to what might have been an emphatic statement. The thing about Jess, though, was that she meant every word that left her lips. Tam had always appreciated that about her; there were no games with Jess, no minefields to wade through. If she hated your ass, she would straight out tell you, and she’d never told him as much. Couple that with her admonition at the airport in New York, and he was feeling pretty positive about his standing with Jo’s big sister.

             
“What was the torture test today?”

             
“Horseback riding,” she said with a shrug. “It was fun. None of us could really ride but Jo. She had to get off and lead Delta’s horse through a stream, got wet up to her boobs and spent the rest of the ride soaked. It’ll be a miracle if she doesn’t catch the flu.”

             
Tam had to grin at the mental image the story conjured. “I would have paid money to see that.”

             
She snorted. “Where are you on all that? What we talked about.”

             
You mean what you demanded?
He shrugged. “We called a truce.”

             
“Truce?” She made a face. “What are you, twelve?”

             
“At least she’s talking to me.”

             
She shook her head and took a deep breath in through her nose, gave him the you’re-a-dumbass headshake. “Swapping pleasantries won’t fix anything. Agreeing to be agreeable is just putting a temporary patch on what’s really wrong.”

             
“I forgot you were a counselor.”

             
“You know I’m telling the truth, smartass.” She took another sip of wine and pegged him with a look that made him feel like he was back in elementary school, fidgeting in the principal’s office. “You didn’t just forget her birthday or something, Tam. You dumped her ass.
In the rain
, like something out of a bad made for TV movie, and didn’t talk to her for years. That was one hell of a grand gesture.”

             
As if he needed the reminder of what he’d done. Like he hadn’t relived it more times than he could handle. He blinked at her, face carefully blank, and opened the book again, pretending to read.

             
After a moment, Jessica’s chair made a sound like she’d stood up. She leaned forward to retrieve Dylan’s Scotch. “It’s going to take a grand gesture to get her back,” she said as a final warning, and then retreated across the room to wait for her husband at a table near the crackling hearth.

             
Tam’s eyes moved over the same line eight times before he gave up, rubbing at them with the thumb and forefinger of one hand. Jess was right, of course, because she was always, maddeningly right.

             
Grand gesture.
Ha!
He thought, and wondered if he could find a boom box to hold over his head.

             
When Jo came into the bar, Tam felt the
ping
of his internal radar system go off. He could sense her: a tingling at the back of his skull, a sudden itch that wanted to tug his eyes over toward the glass-paned French doors of the entrance. She was in jeans and moccasins, a light, fitted green hoodie with the sleeves pushed up. Her hair was still damp from the shower, her pixie face a little flushed from the warm water. Her little digital camera dangled off her wrist from its strap. Tam checked to see that Dylan had arrived, and he had, and then he waited, breath held, pretending to read, to see where Jo went once the bartender handed her a drink. He didn’t quite believe it was happening when she settled in across from him, in the chair Jess had vacated, a big white ceramic mug cradled between both hands. Tam shot a furtive glance over at Jess and thought she winked at him, then his attention locked onto Jo and stayed there.

             
“No pint this time?”

             
She blew the steam off her mug and smiled a small, tired smile. “Coffee with Bailey’s.”

             
“Ah.” Her smile pulled his own into existence, like he was her mirror. “I hear you spent the day wading through creeks.”

             
She rolled her eyes, but chuckled. Fatigue had poked holes in that guard she liked to keep up around him. “Only the one creek. And only because Delta was making sounds only dogs could hear and freaking out her horse. It was fun, though, despite all that.”

             
She set her coffee down and switched on her camera with a series of electronic chimes. She passed it to him and he feigned interest in all the shots with pricked horse ears at the bottom of the screen – of the lake and the deep, enchanted-looking forest – while she chatted about the horse she’d ridden, the bridesmaids’ bitching, and their guide, a woman named Heidi who was apparently “the most charming Irish thing ever.” There were shots Jo had taken of Jess on a gray horse, and some of Jo on the little buckskin she kept raving about. Tam wanted to go to sleep in his chair, her voice caressing him in a way that it hadn’t in a long, long time.

             
Then he stumbled across a picture that had him straightening up in his chair. A little thatched-roof cottage that was probably hundreds of years old stared at him with red-sashed windows for eyes. A white picket fence ran along the front of it, a gate sealing off a cobbled walk. Messy banks of long grass and flowers butted against it on all four sides. A thin tendril of smoke curled up from the stone chimney. “Where’s this?” he asked.

             
His mother’s voice was echoing inside his head
. “I always wanted to go there. I want to stay in a stone cottage, with a white fence. A garden full of wildflowers. Wouldn’t that be lovely?”

             
“Heidi called it the caretaker cottage. There were several of them right along the edge of the property. Some of the staff live there – the barn manager for one, I think, the chef maybe.” She shrugged. “I just thought it was cute.”

             
“Can you email me copies of these?”

             
A glance across the table proved that she was giving him a curious look. Tam knew his face had to be too serious. He hoped his eyes didn’t give anything away.

             
“Sure,” Jo said, studying him.

             
Tell her
, a small voice in the back of his head urged him.
There’s your grand gesture
. He could tell her about Mom, about the cancer, all the years in and out of chemo and radiation, the bills piling up like snow drifts in Canada, about Dad, about the hitting, about Walt, about all the reasons he’d never, ever wanted to dump her that evening, but that he’d had to.

             
Instead, he swallowed the lump in his throat and asked, “what’s on the agenda for tomorrow?” And his chance was lost.

**

              At dinner, Jo caught wind of the best kind of gossip; Dad had brought a football, tucked deep in the bottom of his suitcase, and the next morning, the guys were playing, no ifs, ands or buts. The guys, and, as he’d put it, his “Jo Lynn.” She was so delighted by the possibility that she didn’t protest Ryan’s offer to walk her to her room that night.

             
“I didn’t ever play ball growing up,” Ryan admitted as they stepped off the elevator and started down the hall. He sounded embarrassed about it, maybe even worried.

             
“None of us ever did except my dad,” she said. “Mike played baseball. Jordan was a track star – which was the closest anybody ever came to being a real athlete. Jess cheered.” She rolled her eyes. “I played one season of softball and decided I liked backyard whiffle ball better.”

             
Ryan was frowning. “When we say we’re sports people,” she continued, “we mean we like the adrenaline and heart rate spikes. The grass smell and good, clean sweat. No Super Bowl rings in this family, though. We’re shockingly boring.”

             
He shrugged. “I don’t believe in being boring. There’s always some kind of adventure you could be on.”

             
Jo wanted to roll her eyes. He’d totally missed the point; no one was as exciting to the rest of the world as they seemed to themselves. Her honesty about their modest achievements had been interpreted – as it was with most people in her age bracket – as a declaration of weakness, an admittance that she thought she wasn’t good enough. “And what sort of adventures do you have?” She managed to sound interested and not bitchy.

             
He started to smile as he spoke. “The guys and I go out. Drinks. Dance. Have a good time. They just put in a rock climbing wall at the gym and, ooh,” he got excited, “I’ve been saving up for this cruise.”

             
In other words, he drank and cracked jokes with his buddies like everyone else, but felt the need to turn that into something more than it was.

             
“I wanna do some real traveling,” he said, “I mean, to think that there are people who are born and die in the same town, who don’t see the world…how boring is that? That’s not living!”

             
“You think people like that are small-minded?” she asked innocently.

             
“Small town, small mind.”

             
For some reason, there were people who looked at places like Marietta and Kennesaw – bubbling, thriving Atlanta suburbs – as small towns. Clearly, these people had never been to Alabama. “You know,” she started. “Imagination and mental ability are not limited by geography.” When she glanced at him, she caught his puzzled frown. “There are plenty of celebutants out there who are world travelers and yet attain new levels of stupidity every day. Traveling is great,” she was hiding a smile, “but that takes money. Money I don’t have. And life’s not a competition.”

             
“I never said it was.” He sounded a little defensive. “But you gotta do - ”

             
“What makes you happy,” Jo said, turning to face him as they reached the door to her room. She smiled up at him, laughing at him on the inside and not caring if he interpreted it for something it wasn’t. She had lived a thousand adventures in her backyard growing up. Her lungs filling up with air, her heart pumping, laughter swelling inside her – that was living, actual living, and it didn’t matter if you were rock climbing in Fiji…or playing ball with your brother in the back yard, the sensation was what was important, not the place, not the money. She’d tasted love and the sharp, knife edge of its loss. “I’m boring,” she told Ryan, “and that makes me happy.”

             
He scratched at his hair, confusion not attractive on his face of right angles. He attempted to smile, but she could tell it pained him, that he disagreed with her so strongly it hurt. But, he was nothing if not persistent.

             
“So…can I kiss you goodnight?”

             
Jo’s grin widened. “If you have to ask, then the answer is definitely ‘no.’” She left him standing bewildered in the hall.

21

Now

             
It was raining. A steady, drenching sort of drizzle that didn’t make any sound, but put a layer of cheesecloth over the windows, obscuring the view beyond the great antechamber of an entrance that was the castle’s foyer. Louise Brooks, done up like a woman half her age wearing a diamond necklace that cost twice what Tam had made in his whole working life, had her hands on her hips, bewildered gaze swinging from one male face to the next.

             
“What on
earth
are all of you doing?” she asked, dark eyes as sharp and flinty as Chinese throwing stars.

             
They had to look ten kinds of stupid, all of them in workout gear, hoods pulled up, stretching and doing pushups on the marble floor, clearly intending to go outside while it was raining. The mother of the bride didn’t look like she dared do more that spritz herself with Evian now and then, forget a good game of mud football.

             
“And
you
.” An accusatory, manicured nail jabbed toward Jo, who stuck out like a sore thumb in cheerleading shorts, a sweatband keeping stray hairs from her ponytail off her face. “You’re supposed to be at the gym with the other girls in twenty minutes.”

             
“Don’t worry, ma’am.” Jo was all politeness. “What I’m about to do will make up for the too-fat-for-my-dress workout.”

             
Laughter rippled through the group while Louise Brooks’ face turned a lovely shade of magenta to match her dress.

             
Randy’s chuckles were controlled bursts of thunder in the cavernous space. “A little football won’t ruin your wedding,” he told her with zero tact, “and it might keep us all from killing each other. So,” he waved her off, “if you don’t mind.”

             
“Hey, did you know,” Johnson – who was hovering around Tam this morning like a lonely moth – said, a happy chirp to his voice. “That they call soccer ‘football’ over here?”

             
“Everyone knows that.”

             
“Oh. I just thought - ”

             
“Alright, boys,” Randy boomed, turning to face them all as Louise clipped away on heels so expensive they should have been insured. “And girl.” He tipped his head to Jo. “I’ll be team captain number one. Our blushing bride -” he pointed to Mike and everyone laughed “ - will be captain number two. Seeing as how I’m one, I’ll pick first.”

             
Mike shuffled up beside his dad and folded his arms, the two of them looking very related and very much like middle school kids surveying their choice of dodge ball players. Tam watched the old man’s eyes move across all of them, could feel himself being sized up like a cow at auction, and knew who the first, most coveted choice would be.

             
“Jordie,” Randy said, and Mike rolled his eyes skyward, breath blowing out in frustration. Jordan had not an ounce of body fat and he weighed maybe a buck forty soaking wet. He was a useless tackle and his pitching arm wasn’t the world’s best. But the boy could run, and if you got the ball in his hands, he’d keep on running, touchdown after touchdown without a prayer of getting caught. He’d been Randy’s secret weapon in every front yard game ever played.

             
Tam was picked by Mike and joined by Atkins, Johnson, and Walt. Randy picked Jo, Mike’s trainer buddy Lance, Mitch Huddle, and got stuck with Dylan at the end who looked like he’d rather be anywhere else. Tam wanted to jump teams so bad it made his palms itchy, but instead, he pulled up his hood and trooped down the wide stone steps to the empty lawn.

             
The rain was coming down harder than it looked, so cold it snatched Tam’s breath as it pelted his hoodie like ice chips and soaked him down to the skin almost instantly. The sweatshirt wasn’t going to do anything but weigh him down, so he pulled it over his head and left it on a decorative stone bench, making a mental note to grab it on the way in since it was the only one he’d brought.

             
The grass was thick as new carpet; it made wet, squishing sounds beneath their feet, but Tam couldn’t see any dirt through it, no bare spots. Which meant there was a good chance they wouldn’t wreck it too bad, but that they would slide like they were on a skating rink.

             
Mike pulled them all into a loose, upright huddle as Randy waved his team downfield of them. He propped his hands on his hips and tilted his head forward. So much rain had already collected in his hair that it trickled down his forehead in a zig-zag pattern like lightning bolts. “Okay, Dad’s a bull.” His eyes came to Tam and thirteen years of memories and working-together efficiency passed between them like an electrical current. “He’s big,” he told the other guys, and Tam nodded, “but he’s not too fast anymore. I’ve seen Lance throw dumbbells around like marshmallows, so don’t get tackled by the dude.”

             
“I figure your sister won’t be a problem,” Atkins said with a dark chuckle.

             
Mike and Tam locked eyes again, both of them feeling, correctly, like they were on home turf and dealing with dumbass visitors. It was a good feeling, like he and Mike were as tight as they’d once been. The cool kids. The ones with the inside track. It was a high undercut with a pathetic knowledge that he was neither of those things, but might have thought he had been in his younger years.

             
“My brother.” Mike ignored the Jo comment, more rain dribbling down his face as stinging drops of the stuff fell all around and between them. “Is the goddamn Flash.”

             
“The who?” Atkins wanted to know.

             
Mike rolled his eyes. Tam felt ten feet tall. “The Flash?” Mike huffed. “Whatever. He’s Speedy Gonzales and none of us can catch him once he gets going.
Do not let him get the ball
.”

             
“Keep an eye on Jo.” When Walt spoke, Tam felt a pin go in his balloon – he’d forgotten that the jackass was on his team. Great. Now he had Atkins
and
the Wonder to contend with. “That’s Dad’s MO. He lets her slip through all our fingers and she gets the ball to Jordan.”

             
“I can watch her,” Atkins said with a confidence that made Tam want to take a tire iron to the side of his head.

             
“Let’s go, ladies!” Randy hollered and they broke the huddle, Mike giving Tam one last nod.

             
It didn’t have the same effect as that first moment of eye contact when he’d almost forgotten where he was and under what circumstances. And that was before he heard Atkins and Johnson, sharing a dark comment about Jo right in front of him like he wouldn’t care, as if, since he wasn’t her brother, he wouldn’t be offended. As if she wasn’t
his
.

             
Then again, they didn’t know that.

             
“You think you can get to second on a tackle?” Johnson asked with a sideways grin.

             
“Sure as hell gonna try. Have you seen those tits, man?”

             
“You can keep that whole tomboy act, though.”

             
“I don’t give a shit. She can’t play that shit when she’s sucking me off. After that, she’s some other poor bastard’s problem.”

             
Tam had taken three bristling, violent steps toward the two of them before he caught himself. His heart rate had doubled, his arm was drawn back like he intended to use it. All those times he’d hated his old man for this same thing and here he was off to be violent anyway.

             
But this wasn’t hitting a woman. This wasn’t kicking the dog. This was his Jo they were talking about. This was…

             
He ground his teeth and forced himself to walk away, blinking against the rain. Jo was not his. God knew how many guys she’d “sucked off” since they’d split. She was a big girl now. If she wanted someone like Atkins, that was her prerogative, regardless of what Jordan had said about trying to make him jealous.

             
Like an automaton, he took his place in the line, fingers brushing the grass, muscles bunched and ready, squared off from Mitch Huddle, rain dripping off the end of his nose and clinging to his eyelashes. The clouds overhead seemed to be stacked on top of one another like mattresses, gray to charcoal to indigo. He thought he saw a flicker of lightning in the distance over the lake, whose waters churned beneath the pelting drops. It was a dark day growing more ominous by the moment, and maybe he should have paid attention to that.

**

              Jo was not so naïve or delusional enough to think for a second that she was faster, stronger, more light-footed or more knowledgeable about football than any of the men on the field with her. She’d once spent forty-five minutes trying to explain to Mike that she did not, in fact, want to be a boy, nor did she have any false notions about her own physical strength. Athleticism did not mean she wanted to burn her bra or sign up with the Marine Corps. But as she charged across the grass, sneakers slipping on the turf, raindrops like bees hitting her ass-first, her heart was in the game, and adrenaline shot through her veins, stretching her legs out across the field.

             
The game plan was simple. Dad and Lance would block. Mitch and Jo would distract, Mitch would get the ball to Jo, Jo would settle it in Jordan’s hands and let his golden sneakers do the rest.

             
Squinting through the rain that poured into her eyes, she watched the ball’s arc through the leaden sky come to an end in Mitch’s hands. Johnson was on him almost instantly, but Lance was there and they collided with a meaty thud of arms and legs and heavy bodies slamming together.

             
Jo kept moving, knowing she had to run twice as fast to cover the same ground as the boys. Dylan was no baller – he preferred the golf course – but he was quick enough, and she saw him move past her, ready when Mitch sent the ball spinning his way. It was a beautifully executed lateral pass, but Dylan nearly dropped it, fumbling it against his chest, but got it under control and went barreling straight toward Walt, as planned.

             
Jo heard her dad thundering along somewhere to her left and dug in deep, pushing harder off the wet grass with each stride, trying to take deep, measured breaths, the rain stinging her eyes until the scene in front of her unfolded as if on the other side of an old, warped window. Walt was almost on top of Dylan, arms outstretched, ready for the tackle. Dylan whirled, put his back to the tackle, and made the pass-off backward to Jo right before he was taken to the ground with a wet thud.

             
“Go, go!” Randy shouted and she went.

             
Jordan had to be somewhere back behind her to the right. And here came both Tam and Ryan in her direction. Which was okay, because Dad was right there, ready to –

             
Mike collided with her dad. Randy went down with an
oomph
as the air left his lungs, and then she was totally exposed, two guys charging at her. Her sprint felt pathetic and girlish as Tam and Ryan came rushing up to meet her. Jordan was headed her way, but he couldn’t take them both out. The ball was leaving Team Randy’s possession regardless.

             
She wasn’t one to get distracted in the heat of the moment, in the middle of a game, but as the rain kicked up a notch, the wind slanting it sideways, her eyes went to Tam. His rain-slicked hair was pushed back off his face, his long legs pushing him just that much faster than Ryan, and her mind left her body and went spinning away, zooming backward from the scene. She watched the events that were about to unfold through someone else’s eyes, as if it were on TV, and she pulled a memory up across the screen of her brain like an old home movie.

             
A cold, crispy December afternoon. A Sunday. Thick banks of gray snow clouds building up above their heads, pushing down on them. The breeze snatching Tam’s dark spikes of hair across his forehead, his blue eyes glittering with concentration.

             
Being the youngest and being a girl had never saved her from getting good and tackled growing up. Walt tried to be a little more delicate about it, but she always got the breath knocked out of her and came up with rips in her jeans and dirt smudges all over her face. If anything, it was just incentive to run all the faster.

             
That afternoon, Dad had interfered beautifully and she had been all out in the open, ready to pass off to flying-feet Jordan. A hand had locked onto the back of her sweatshirt, stopping her short like she was a marionette whose strings had all been grabbed at once. She’d closed her eyes and braced for the fall, for the crushing weight of a body slamming down onto hers. But instead, she’d been pulled backward, so shocked the ball had slid out of her fingers. The world had gone the way of
The Blair Witch Project
, shaking and sideways, as she’d tumbled down and over and somehow landed right side up, straddling her tackler’s stomach.