Keep You (38 page)

A smile streaked across his face, but then faded. “Where then?” Anxiety spiked in his eyes.

She pressed another kiss to his mouth. “Let’s go home,”
she said, and a thrill went shooting through her, cranking up her smile until her cheeks ached.

“Home,” he said, and then his smile returned. “That’s
kinda terrifying.”

**

              Randy was waiting for them in the garage at Casa de Walker, hands in the pockets of his jeans, face big and imposing and unreadable. Jo shook the raindrops out of her hair and gave his hand one last squeeze, then she headed for the door to the house. “Go easy on him, Dad,” she warned as she passed Randy, and then she disappeared in one last flap of shining hair.

             
Tam drummed his fingers against the side of his leg and took a deep breath. Here went nothing.

             
“We heard about your mom. We’re real sorry, kid.” Randy spoke first, and Tam felt his legs moving, carrying him forward, toward the Walker patriarch rather than away from him like in the back hall at Billingsly.

             
“Thanks.” He raked a hand through his hair and it came away covered in raindrops.

             
“When’s the funeral?”

             
He drew closer. “Two days. It won’t be anything fancy. No viewing, just a graveside service.”

             
Randy nodded. “Beth wants to have a thing at the house afterward. Make a lot of food. You know.”

             
“I’m not sure anyone will come.”

             
“Well, for us then. The family.”

             
Family
. How many times had Jo used that word with him in the past couple of weeks? It squeezed his heart.

             
He was toe to toe with the big man now, and he tilted his head back so he could make proper eye contact, suddenly nervous. “I want to apologize,” he began on a deep breath, “for the way I acted in Ireland. And for…for not telling you upfront about me and Jo. I should have, and I’m sorry.”

             
“Yeah, well, I’m sorry too,” Randy said, and Tam wasn’t sure he’d heard right.

             
“For what?”

             
A meaty hand clapped down on his shoulder. “Beth and me, what with things the way they were with your mom, well, we shoulda reached out. Checked up on you.”

             
“You…you didn’t need to,” Tam stammered.

             
“Yeah we did.” His big hand squeezed. “So we’re doing it now. I’m guessing Jo already told ya – we want you to stay with us. For as long as you need to.”

             
It wouldn’t  matter how many times he heard it, it would never stop being a sucker punch. A sweet, wonderful sucker punch that left him wondering what he’d ever done to deserve this sort of total kindness from a whole family of people. He didn’t understand how, amid the shitstorm of his life, he’d gotten so lucky.

             
“I don’t even know what to say.” Tam felt his eyes start to sting and hated it.

             
Randy held out his other hand for a shake and when Tam accepted it, he got pulled into a manly, fatherly bear hug. “Welcome home, Tammy.” And he was grateful he didn’t have to face the man because he didn’t want him to see the wetness in his eyes.

             
“Thank you,” he said, and knew it didn’t begin to cover things.

             
Randy laughed. “You know you’re gonna have to marry her, right?”

             
He smiled. “That was the plan.”

29

Now

             
“And now,”
the DJ’s voice boomed through the ballroom on the other side of the double swinging doors that separated the reception from the hallway where the wedding party waited for the verbal prompts so that they could all make their big, flamboyant entrances.
“Please welcome to the ballroom brother-in-law and sister of the groom, Mister and Missus Tam and Joanna Wales!”

             
Jo hooked her arm through her husband’s elbow, allowed herself another of those never-getting-old moments to savor the taste of
husband
in her mind, and smiled up at him.

             
“You ready?” Tam had the most unexpected twinkle in his eye, looking like James Dean off to the opera in his tux.

             
They’d buried his mother in a shady little spot among a sea of strangers’ headstones a month ago. They’d gone down to the courthouse a week after that and said clinical, legal vows, fingers intertwined, shaking with how excited they were. They’d had no honeymoon, no fanfare, just dinner at home. Their rings were plain, sterling silver placeholders until they could afford something real, but Jo didn’t need anything more; the two of them were real and screw the jewelry. Dennis Brooks had pulled strings with his country club pals and now here they were, at Delta and Mike’s real wedding, the way it was always supposed to be.

             
They pushed through the double doors and into a ballroom that was darker than the night beyond, low blue and red lights painting a night club atmosphere over the country club white linen and fine china feel of the place. Applause erupted, because people would cheer for anything at this type of event, and they took their place at the edge of the dance floor while the rest of the bridesmaids and groomsmen came in two at a time, all of them announced. One through Eleven seemed less vicious removed from Ireland and removed from that depressed, overly sensitive mindset from which Jo had viewed all of them before. Ryan Atkins studiously did not make eye contact after he’d thrown them the requisite sneer; none of the wedding party seemed quite able to grasp this new togetherness of theirs, but he was the only one who deigned acknowledge it negatively.

             
Walt stared past them like they were strangers. Jo wondered how long it would take before she was able to speak to her eldest brother.

             
Jordan had a bridesmaid on each arm and Jo smiled at the ridiculous wink he gave her as he walked past. He’d been the first one to grab Tam up in a handshake-hug combo after the wedding and call him “brother.”

             
Jess was resplendent in the green dress that had been meant for Billingsly; she and Dylan belonged on the home page of the website for this place, groomed to perfection, elegant to a fault.

             
And then came the bride and groom.
“For the first time anywhere, Mister and Missus Michael Walker!”
the DJ shouted into his mike and all the guests were on their feet, clapping.

             
Later, once the obligatory first dance had been danced, when Delta and her sorority sisters were executing some organized chant in time to a Beyoncé song, Jo leaned sideways in her chair and looped her arm through Tam’s, resting her head against his shoulder. His mother’s heart-shaped ruby swung forward on its chain around her neck, caught the light and scattered it across the white tablecloth.

             
He tilted his head toward hers so he could be heard, lips brushing against her temple when he spoke. “You didn’t miss having one of these, did you?”

             
“Are you really asking that question?”

             
He chuckled. “Guess not.” He lifted her wrist and rolled it beneath his, keeping their arms hooked, but enabling him to thread his fingers through hers, his wedding band warm and smooth against her knuckles. “You look smokin’ hot in that dress, you know,” he said in a voice just loud enough that only she could hear him over the pulsing music and mingled swell of voices.

             
“Does that mean I need to dress up more often?” She smiled as she asked it because she couldn’t stop smiling. The extra toothbrush in the upstairs bath made her smile. His clothes stacked on her dresser made her smile. The month of nights she’d shared her bed with him made her smile. And saying her new last time – that one made her cheeks ache with all the smiling.

             
“No.” His voice sent goose bumps rippling down her arms. “Just means it’s gonna be fun to take it off you later.”

             
In so many ways, Jo knew her life was ten different kinds of unremarkable. But as she sat with the dark haired boy who’d turned into her husband, as they rolled their eyes and made snarky, anti-wedding comments, she felt full to the brim with luck, blessed, and
that
was pretty remarkable.

**

              “Aren’t they sweet?” Beth leaned into her husband, relief washing over her. Here in the dark, rave atmosphere of the reception, she could say, finally, that the Mike and Delta wedding crush had come to an end. After the brunch they were hosting the next day, it would all be over and they’d only have to see the rest of the Brooks family when baby shower time rolled around.

             
Randy snorted. “Mikey can’t dance for shit.”

             
And that was true; Mike was on one leg and hopping like he was having a seizure, Delta laughing and egging him on. “Agreed,” she said with a little laugh, “but I didn’t mean them.”

             
“Who…? Oh.” She watched his eyes drop across their own table where Jo and Tam sat sideways, facing the dance floor. “Yeah,” he agreed reluctantly, not liking the thought of finding anything “sweet.” The two of them had their heads bent together, Tam’s black fading into Jo’s dark blonde, smiles curling up the corners of their mouths as they talked, lost in their own little private world.

             
“I’m so glad,” Beth said with a sigh that was blessedly stress-free. It was like Tam had never been away. He’d fallen right into their household, a missing puzzle piece, her sixth child. “He – they both – are so happy, and they need to be.”

             
“Did you talk to the bank yet?” Randy asked, and she nodded.

             
“Yep. Everything’s all sorted out. Now we just have to tell Tam and see how he reacts.”

             
She knew he would try to refuse them, but that didn’t matter. She wanted, needed to do this, for the boy who’d meant so much to her kids, and who was now one of them.

             
“All our babies are married off,” she said, a tad wistful, as she glanced around the room. Her eyes landed on her second-youngest, Jordan reclined back in his chair beside Tam, working on his second rum and Coke, his curly hair gelled back into some semblance of tight order. He’d danced before, dragged up onto the floor by his sisters, but he just watched now, expression far away.

             
And here came another of those mother sighs. “All but Jordie,” she said. “My poor sweet Jordie.”

**

Then

             
It never failed that Mike failed to clean his room like his mother had asked and at some point every Sunday afternoon, Beth dragged him off, sometimes literally, despite all his whining. Days like that, like today, Tam was left in the company of Mike’s two younger siblings.

             
It was January, a bitter, blustery day outside, Jordan had just turned eleven and was obsessed with playing Chinese checkers. Tam was thankful for the warm rug under his belly and the heavy food inside it, and he would gladly play Chinese checkers with Jordan and Jo for hours. Or however long it took Mike to clean up his room.

             
The dice left Jo’s tiny hand and skittered across the board, knocking loose marbles ( Jordan said, “Hey!” and scrambled to put them back in their divots) clacking off the wooden frame of the board and landing face-up on a one and a two. “Three,” she groaned, and jumped her red marble forward the requisite spaces. She dropped her chin in her hands and her bright, blue-green eyes cut over toward Tam. “You’re still winning.”

             
“Beginners luck, must be,” Jordan said, and reached for the dice.

             
Tam shrugged. “I don’t believe in luck.”

             
“You don’t?” Jo scrunched up her little button nose like a rabbit would. “I do.”

             
Nothing Mike’s ten-year-old, scruffy sister had to say would change his deep-rooted opinions about luck, but for the hell of it, he asked, “Really?” and watched Jordan jump his marble down the star-shaped pattern of spaces on the board.

             
“Yep,” she said brightly. “Like Friday at school, we were supposed to have a test, and I hadn’t studied, but Mrs. Ambrose changed her mind, so I didn’t have to take it. That was lucky.”

             
“Or maybe just a coincidence,” Tam said and Jordan grinned as he passed over the dice.

             
“Maybe,” she conceded, “but I like to think it’s luck.”

             
“Why?”

             
The shy smile that stole across her face was full of secret wishes and a girl’s sense of wonder. “Because I think one day, all the little luck will turn into this great big luck when I really need it.”

**

Now

             
His great big luck had come, and in between it, he was seeing that there were tiny, bright spots of little luck hidden in the day to day. For instance, Tam got to pull memories like that out of his mental files and replay them. Because even if he couldn’t quite believe he had the all-grown-up, sexy Jo for himself now, he liked, every now and then, to reach back through the layers of time and appreciate little Jo for her childlike understanding of the world. She’d been right: luck existed. Fate. What have you. Somewhere along the way, divinity had seen fit to put her in his path, and he thanked whatever lucky stars would listen when he thought about the day Mike Walker had tapped him on the shoulder and asked him about AC/DC.

             
“So gossip,” Jordan said. The two of them were sitting at the kitchen table, polishing off what was left of the mini key lime tarts, eating straight off the serving platter, licking their fingers and not caring. “Is that Dennis had the country club booked already, in case the Ireland thing fell through at the last minute.”

             
“Smart man.” Tam swallowed and reached for another of the tarts. “Total dickhead - ”

             
“Absolutely.”

             
“ – but smart.”

             
Jo came into the kitchen, carrying a stack of paper plates destined for the trash. “Thank God that’s over,” she said as she chucked them into the industrial sized bag that was propped up against the end of the breakfast bar. “Those people…” She shook her head. “I guess living with servants prevents you from ever learning how to clean up after yourself. Pigs.”

             
“Our gracious hostess,” Tam said, and she stuck her tongue out at him before she pulled out a chair and snagged one of the last two tarts off the tray.

             
“Hey,” Jordan protested. “We had a system going here.”

             
“I’m saving you from an extra lap in the morning. Think of it that way.”

             
The brunch, which Beth had volunteered to host – Southern hospitality and all that – had resulted in eighty-some-odd relatives all crammed into the Walker house. Tam had camped out in the kitchen with Jordan and Randy, fielding the questions from Jo’s cousins, aunts, uncles, and even the dreaded grandmother, about their unannounced, shotgun wedding. Convincing them Jo wasn’t knocked up had been the hardest part.

             
“Is it over?” Randy asked as he followed his wife in from the dining room, his arms heaped with all of Beth’s serving dishes. “For the love of Christ, tell me it’s over.”

             
They all chuckled, and Beth tried to hide a grin. “It’s over. They are married and it is
over
.”

             
“Thank Jesus.”

             
Beth glanced over toward the table. “Oh good. Boys, finish up whatever you want, ‘cause I don’t have room in the fridge for it.”

             
Tam was already eyeing the remnants of Jess’s homemade coconut chocolate truffles, was leaning across the table to make a grab for their plate, when he realized that no one else was talking and all side noise had ceased. When he glanced up, four pairs of eyes were trained on him. Beth and Jo wore matching little slips of smiles.