One Reckless Summer (34 page)

“I know,” Sue Ann admitted. “But I’m out of ideas to make you feel better. And if you don’t take this stuff away from me,
I’ll
gain five pounds, and then, despite the fact that I’ve orchestrated another grandma weekend, neither
one
of us will be having any sex.”

When a knock came on the back door the next day around
noon
, she leapt from the couch. Her first thought was that it was Mick, that he’d come back to her, that there was some crazy explanation for where he’d been the last few days.

But when she saw her father, her heart dropped all over again, and she felt angry at herself for thinking it could
possibly
be Mick. He was long gone, out of her life, never coming back, and she’d been a fool for him. She didn’t believe Mick had used her to keep his secret or anything
that
awful, but what she did suspect was that he’d simply decided
love
was too big a word for him, that staying in Destiny for her was too big a commitment. In short, she figured he’d decided she wasn’t worth sacrificing for. Even after all
she’d
sacrificed for
him
this summer.

“You’re still in your pajamas,” her dad said.

She looked down. “Oh, you’re right. Guess I just…haven’t gotten around to getting dressed yet.” She’d actually been lying on the couch under the afghan, polishing off Sue Ann’s ice cream. Oh boy—she suddenly felt pathetic.

Her dad looked duly concerned. “Are you…not feeling well?”

Jenny considered all the ways she could play this, but decided to just be completely straightforward.

“Mick left me,” she informed him. “And I was in love with him.” Then she plopped back down on the couch. “So no—I’m not feeling well.”

As she stared at the empty ice cream container, she heard her father pull in a long, deep breath, then let it back out. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“No you’re not,” she snapped suddenly, lifting her eyes to his. “You hated him. You didn’t even
know
him, and you hated him. Well, it’s your lucky day, Dad, because he’s gone. Happy now?”

He lowered his gaze, hesitated a long moment, then said, “Honey, I just did what I thought was best.”

And Jenny gasped, her eyes flying wide as the gravity of what he’d just said hit her full force.
Oh God!
“What did you do? What the hell did you do?”

Again, her father let out a sigh, and her heart beat too fast, and she thought she might lose her mind if he didn’t spit it out—but then he finally answered. “Jenny, I just went and paid him a visit—that’s all.”

But she knew that
wasn’t
all. “A visit? What kind of visit? Tell me what you did, Dad!”

He looked appropriately guilty now, only able to meet her gaze briefly as he said, “I told Mick that it was best he leave now, and…”

Oh God, she wanted to kill him. “And what?”

“And, well, without quite saying so, guess I implied that I’d charge him for
harborin
’ a fugitive after the fact if he didn’t.” Now her father
did
finally look her in the eye—and she stared back at him, dumbfounded. “I kept my word to you, Jenny—I let his brother die in peace, I didn’t make any trouble for ’em. But once his brother was dead, well…I thought it was time he
move
on.”

Jenny couldn’t believe it. She felt like someone was sucking the life from her body, from the inside out, like she was melting away to nothing. “How dare you!” she screamed. “How dare you do this to
me!
”

“Jenny, he’s not the right guy for you and, deep down, you know that. You’ve been hurt by Terrence and along
comes
Mick Brody, but when all’s said and done—”

“When all’s said and done, “she interrupted sharply, “you don’t know anything about me. You don’t know how I feel or what I want or what kind of man is right for me. And I’m not sure you really care—or you’d let me live my own life!” At some point she didn’t realize, she’d pushed to her feet so that she and her father stood face to face. She clenched her fists at her side, waiting for him to answer, to defend himself, to argue—something.

So it surprised her when he looked sad, almost sympathetic, and spoke quietly. “Thing is…he left. Just like that. If he’d stayed, well then, maybe I’d have thought there was more to him,
somethin
’ worth you
hangin
’ on to. But he didn’t even say goodbye, did he? Or you’d have already
known
why he left.”

“No,” she whispered, wondering why she felt so embarrassed, almost ashamed. Her chest ached. “He didn’t say goodbye.”

“I know that hurt you, but…if that’s all it took to make him
leave,
he couldn’t be much of a man.”

And maybe her father was right about that—she couldn’t figure it out right now, she couldn’t be sure of anything at the moment. All she knew was that Mick was gone because her father had threatened him, and her happiness was gone
with
him. She’d thought this couldn’t get any worse, but it had. Her heart was breaking all over again, just in a new way this time. “Maybe not,” she finally said, feeling a whole new sort of wall being erected inside her, “but maybe the same is true of the guy who threatened him, too. Maybe neither
one
of you is worth my love.”

Walter tried to feel happy as he checked the lasagna in the oven, but it wasn’t working. He should probably at least feel
nervous,
or guilty for using Judy’s recipe to feed another woman—but none of that was happening, either. He couldn’t stop thinking about Jenny.

She’d looked so broken. He’d known she’d be upset, but he hadn’t imagined she would take it quite
that
hard.

Still, it was best, wasn’t it? No matter how he looked at it, Mick Brody wasn’t the kind of guy his daughter should be with. And it’d been bad enough when he’d thought it was just a summer fling, but when he’d started getting the idea that Brody wasn’t going to leave town, even after the death of his brother, he’d felt a call to action, like he had to do something to protect her, once and for all.

Just then, he heard a car in the driveway—kind of a loud one. He walked down the hall into the foyer and glanced out to see Anita getting out of…well, an old, piece-of-crap Dodge, one that apparently needed a muffler. He couldn’t help letting it remind him that he’d…oh,
Lordamercy
—he’d begun to pursue a relationship with this woman, and it could damage the way people saw him.

It was a shame, because if people gave her a chance, if they looked beyond the beat-up car in the driveway and the tight tops she wore, he thought they’d have no choice but to like her. She wore another one tonight—this one tan with gold flecks in it that glittered as she moved up his walk and made his groin contract.

And then Walter drew in his breath as his own thought slapped him in the face. Was he a hypocrite? Was it possible? Could Mick Brody be like Anita? Could there somehow be more to him than Walter could see?

Naw
—couldn’t be. It was just like he’d told Anita—most people didn’t change. And he’d seen nothing in his brief meeting with Mick Brody that had impressed him.

Anita—she was…a rare breed. Rare enough that he was willing to take a chance here and hope people knew him well enough to trust his opinion and not judge her too quickly. But Mick Brody—nope, he was nothing that special.

He opened the door as she stepped up on the front stoop. “Anita—hello. You find the place okay?”

She smiled, nodded. “You give good directions. Must be the policeman in you.”

“You, uh, look real nice. Come on in.”

“Thanks,” she said, confident as ever. “You look nice, too.” He’d worn a blue polo shirt and pleated khaki pants in an attempt to hide his expanding gut.

Walter showed Anita to the kitchen, and at first it was awkward, especially when she said, “Whatever’s cooking smells good,” and he stupidly said, “My wife’s lasagna. I mean, late wife,” and suffered the first stabs of guilt of the evening.

But then things got better. Because it seemed nothing much
phased
Anita. She’d simply replied, “She was a lucky lady,” then quickly busied herself putting together the salad fixings he’d laid out while he sliced a loaf of Italian bread. That was another reason he liked her so much—no matter how nervous he got, she didn’t seem to notice, and it put him right back at ease.

It was after they sat down to dinner that Anita asked him how Jenny was. “The last time we talked, you two were at odds. I hope that’s gotten better now.”

And Walter discovered he could barely swallow the bite of bread he’d just taken. He hadn’t expected Jenny to come up—he’d resolved that
he
wouldn’t bring her up tonight, because he didn’t want to ruin the evening with how upset he was about her. “Afraid the truth is,” he finally answered, “things are a lot worse. I
sorta
…talked to that
fella
she was
seein
’ and…well, I told him to leave town.”

“Walter,
no,
” Anita said, sounding truly disappointed. It embarrassed him a little—apparently, when it came to this, Anita
wasn’t
going to put him at ease.

“Now, I know I was
buttin
’ in where I probably shouldn’t have, but the boy left, and I’m glad. Only…now I don’t know if
Jenny’ll
ever forgive me. She said she was in love with him. I found her in her pajamas in the middle of the day. I’ve never seen her like this before, even after her divorce back in the spring. But I only did what I thought was right. The boy…well, the truth is, he’s a criminal.” He decided to go ahead and tell Anita that—mainly because it seemed like a good defense.

And it did seem to catch her attention. “Oh. Well,
bad
crimes?” she asked, tearing a bite of bread off the slice in her hand.

Walter replied, “Aren’t any crimes bad?”

But across the table from him, Anita simply shrugged. “In my mind, everything’s relative. If he’s an ax murderer, yeah, get him away from her. But if he’s got a speeding ticket or two, well…you see what I’m saying.”

Walter thought for a moment on how to phrase this next part,
then
let down his defenses a little. “I can’t really go into what he did, but the thing is—I’m not sure
what
I think about it. Jenny believed in her heart that it wasn’t wrong, but I didn’t see it that way.” He shook his head a little, pondering it. “Only maybe that was the lawman in me—maybe I was narrow-minded, being too much an officer of the law and not enough of a…person.”

Suddenly, Anita’s eyes looked a little glassy, and awfully sad. Walter didn’t know what to make of it. Lord, how had he upset her?

And when she spoke, her voice came out lower than usual. “Can I tell you a story, Walter?”

“Um, sure, of course.”

“Well,” she said, still sounding unlike her normal self—stiffer, and less confident, “I’m only going to talk about this once because I don’t like thinking of it. But…once upon a time, I had myself a little child.”

Walter was stunned. Anita hadn’t seemed like the maternal type. “Oh,” he murmured.

She swallowed visibly,
then
went on. “And that child’s daddy was the spawn of the devil himself, I swear it. But the law said I had to let my child go with him even when I knew it wasn’t safe. It was the hardest thing I ever did, and the worst thing I ever did. He took my child and he ran, Walter. That was twenty years ago, and I haven’t seen either one of them since.”

Walter’s jaw dropped.

“I spend every night wondering where my child is, if he’s healthy, if he’s happy, if he’s had any sort of decent life. I pray for him every night, too, although I don’t know if God listens to prayers from a woman like me. And if I had it to do over again, you best believe I would have broken the law. I would have broken it a hundred times if it kept my child safe. So I’m just saying that…sometimes there are good reasons to break laws. Sometimes it’s not all black-and-white.”

Walter didn’t know what to do, what to say. So he set down his bread and reached across the table and covered Anita’s hand with his. “I’m real sorry about that, Anita. That’s…well, just about one of the worst things I’ve ever heard. And…I reckon you’re right—I wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d been the one to run.”

And then, just when Walter didn’t know if he’d said the right thing, or how on earth a man could console a mother on the loss of a child—Anita bounced back to her normal self and said, “Well, enough about that. I just…wanted to try to make you look at things from your Jenny’s point of view a little bit, and from the view of this boy of hers.”

He nodded—he got the point. He might not like it, but he got it.

“Now, let’s talk about this lasagna,” she said, more cheerful. “When you invited me over, I had no idea I’d be getting a gourmet meal. What’s in it that makes it so tasty?”

Walter answered her as best he could, but her words stuck in his mind. Jenny had said the same thing about the world not always being black-and-white. But Anita’s story dug down deep inside him. Even as they went on eating, chatting, he couldn’t shake thinking about it. No wonder she was so strong—she’d
had
to be, for a long time now.

Was he wrong? About Mick Brody?

Seemed everywhere he turned, people said he was. First Jenny, now Anita.