Past Due (16 page)

“You can’t blame Jake.”

“Why not? He lied to you, Jenna. He never talked to me.”

“He went to jail for harassing your family. I know he was there. He had a restraining order to prove he’d been to your house.”

Tres shook his head. Jenna’s words made no sense. His anger propelled him beyond rational thought. He needed her to admit Jake had robbed him, and then they could move on. He couldn’t stomach her defending him.

“He lied. The bastard somehow tricked you.”

“No, Jake wouldn’t do that.”

“I’m telling you, I never met the guy. If he said he talked to me then, he is a bold faced lying piece of shit.”

“I don’t know what happened. Maybe you don’t remember.”

“Don’t remember someone coming to me to tell me you needed me? Bullshit, Jenna. You better try harder than that.”

“I just know he’s not to blame.”

He asked, his voice cold and hard as steel. Jenna’s spine stiffened instinctively. “If not Jake, then who the hell do I blame?”

“I don’t know, but not Jake,” Jenna answered quietly, reluctantly. Jake had been too good to her. She couldn’t sacrifice him to ease the blame on herself. That would be disloyal to him and to Maureen. “How the hell can you defend him to me?” He stood rolling Jenna from his lap. He paced as he buttoned his shirt. “How can you protect the bastard? If it weren’t for him, we would have figured this out.”

Jenna shook her head, “He did nothing wrong. He and Maureen were all I had.”

Tres felt the fury rise from deep within his soul. The seething jealousy in him had years to grow and flourish on very fertile ground. The mention of his name made his blood boil and to hear Jenna defend him, to espouse his honor and integrity, caused the bilious feelings in Tres to bubble over like a poisonous brew.

Red faced with rising fury, he turned to Jenna, “So, that leaves you to blame, right Jenna?”

Jenna squared her chin and looked at him directly in the eye, “It would be more appropriate.”

“Bullshit,” he yelled. “Bullshit.” Jenna winced and pulled the sheet tighter around her.

“I won’t accept that, Jenna.”

“You have to,” she said her voice shaking, “it’s the truth.”

“The Truth?” Tres’s neck bulged and his temples pounded. “The truth,” he explained through gritted teeth, “is that Jake probably wanted you for himself. He lied to get you. He took everything from me.”

“But I brought the letter to your house. I saw you with the other girl.”

“There was never another girl. Why do you keep saying that Jenna? If you wanted to be with Jake, then just say it. Quit trying to make it my fault.”

“I saw you.” She broke down and buried her face in her hands. She wasn’t crazy. She knew what she saw. But how did she get him to remember?

“Get dressed.” He surprised her by tossing her clothes on her lap.

“Why?” Jenna asked quietly.

“We’re going to talk with my mother, ask her about the supposed letter.”

“No.” Jenna shook her head. “I won’t go. You don’t believe me. You’re not looking to prove what I said, you think I’m lying. Why would I lie to you, Tres?”

“I can think of several good reasons, but to be fair, I will look into all aspects of this situation before I assume the worst in you. So get dressed.”

“No.”

“Why not?” His voice oozed sarcasm and brittle fury, “We’re out to find someone to blame, someone other than your precious Jake. So, put your party dress on and let’s hit the road. We have a mission: the Exoneration of Mr. Austin Tour.” His face twisted with anger. He knew Jake was to blame and he’d prove it to her. He’d obliterate Jake’s memory from her mind and her heart. For his sanity, he had to. She trusted Jake above all others and that burned through him like a venomous bite.

Jenna knew she deserved his wrath, but she wasn’t certain anyone else did. She had to calm him down, before he turned his anger on others. And she certainly didn’t want to be dragged to his home disheveled and near hysteria. She had to get him to see reason. “This is a bad idea, Tres. Wait until you calm down. Please, just calm down.”

“Why the hell should I calm down? I have a son—a fourteen-year-old son I have had no contact with until today.” He leaned over the bed, his stare leveling her. “How about you let me have him for the next fourteen years, and then I’ll bring him back and we’ll see how damn calm you are.”

He turned from her and grabbed his keys from the table. Without looking back he asked, “So, are you coming with me? Let me prove to you Jake isn’t a damned saint?”

“No,” Jenna answered softly.

“Suit yourself.” He turned back to her. “Just remember, Jen, you chose a memory over me. Love your ghost. Protect the son of a bitch. See if I give a damn, but don’t you dare leave here. We’re not done with this.” His eyes were hard, his voice sarcastic, “I’d hate to find out fourteen years from now you’ve hidden another one of my kids from me.”

“Tres, please,” she called as he stormed to the door. She followed, him grabbing hold of his hand and trying to stop him, but he yanked it away. She held the sheet to her body as she called to him in the hallway, “Please, don’t leave. Don’t leave like this. I love you, Tres. I’m not choosing Jake. I’m just telling you the truth.”

Tres paused only a moment, his fury unabated. “His truth, Jenna. You bought every line he fed you. Believed his words over what you should have known in your heart about me.” He turned from her, the emotion too much for him; the tears glistened in his eyes. He stood still a few moments, and then turned back to her, “I need more answers. I can’t just accept being robbed of this. I can’t accept exalting Jake and marking this up to a misunderstanding. Don’t you get it?”

Before she could say another word, he stepped onto the elevator. The doors closed and he was gone. She stood frozen for several minutes naked but for a sheet in a hotel hallway. She did get it. She did feel his pain, but she didn’t know how to fix it.

She hurried to the room and dialed Maureen. She broke down when the familiar voice answered. Jenna felt instantly homesick and lost, wanted desperately to be in that familiar, safe place.

Between sobs she told Maureen, “He hates me.”

“What happened, darlin’?”

“He’s going to take my baby. He hates me. He’s so mad. What do I do?”

“Where are you, darlin’? I’m coming to get you.”

“No. Tres told me not to leave till he gets back. And I have my car. I just don’t know what to do.”

“You need to be home.”

“I won’t have a home. Tan is so much like his dad. He’s going to hate me too. What have I done, Maureen? It’s over. I’ve lost everything.”

Chapter 12

It took Tres less than an hour to reach his family home in Surry, Virginia. The Coulter homestead sat nestled on the northern tip of the Hampton Roads community along the James River. The fertile soil of the area cultivated family lines that were older than the nation that grew from and around it. In 1607, three tiny ships with 104 European men sailed up the James River and founded a community there. Family lore dated the Coulter family back to one of those boats. Tres couldn’t verify the absolute validity of the tale, but he did know the rolling land with its groves of pine and fields of corn nurtured the Coulter clan for several hundred years. Progress transformed many of the neighboring plantations into subdivisions and strip malls, but not the Coulter farm. Their land mass grew as his mother quickly purchased any bit of land bordering her property thereby isolating the homestead by 526 acres of woods. His mother wasn’t an environmentalist, probably never gave a single moment of thought to nature, but she did despise neighbors. Her work kept her in the public eye and her apartment in the capital city of Richmond kept her shoulder to shoulder with her neighbors, so when she came home to the “farm” (where the only active agriculture was his Grams’s tiny vegetable patch), she wanted to escape civilization.

The drive through familiar ground did little to cool Tres’s simmering temper. His mood felt no calmer as his car wound its way up the mile long private road than when he left the hotel. At the end of the road he saw the massive Revival style home, its box like symmetry and solidness offering no comfort or peace of belonging. The two-story Grecian columns were white like the house, the Georgian shutters painted a green so deep and rich they appeared to be black from the road. It looked the same as it did since his childhood, including the concrete urns topped with the predictable wine colored mums, each perfectly rounded and identical to the next. For all he knew the place remained the same as it had been since the antebellum period that gave birth to it, raising it from the bones of the original three room farmhouse.

The sighting of his childhood home brought back no nostalgia or wash of pleasant memories. He felt nothing move in his soul, but he did recognize the irony of the place. Built to endure, to withstand the changes around it, this stack of wood and mortar, the icon of Coulter strength and endurance remained intact, but the family it sheltered fell scattered and broken. No one came here anymore. Care takers overseen by his Grams maintained the mostly empty structure. It was only the celebration of her 80th year that brought the group of blood strangers together.

His family was a family in the sense they all had the same DNA, but lately that’s where the connection ended. Tres couldn’t remember the last time he talked to his mother about something other than his career. Barbara Coulter accepted nothing but success and assumed her eldest son shared her drive. As Tres approached the house, he realized his mother’s energy had sustained him since he lost Jenna. He surrendered his will to hers, allowing her force, her dreams to propel him forward.

He spent at least one day of each week with his mother, but they never discussed anything but work. He admitted with a frown that he honestly didn’t know what his brothers were doing, where they worked, or even where they were living. A distant memory wiggled free from a corner of his mind long since sealed. A hazy memory of a time when his family acted like a family and the behemoth before him functioned as a home.

A time existed, when his father lived, that his family had been close. They had romped in the yard on warm summer evenings retiring happily exhausted, smelling of night air and fresh cut grass. Their house had buzzed with energy. Their father’s laid back nature over ruled his mother’s intensity. His dad insisted the manor be treated as a home and they lived free in the museum like structure. The most creative and destructive game his dad invented was the indoor wiffle ball world series. They played the series of games in the cavernous foyer of the manor. The pitcher would toss the ball to the batter at the plate on the mezzanine half a story above. The hitter scored a point if he could survive the slide down the winding banister untagged. They would play for hours driving their mother to lock herself away to share a hot bath with a bottle of wine. She never participated in the rowdiness, but she never tried too hard to curtail it.

The three Coulter boys, under their father’s tutelage, were rambunctious, maybe even a bit unruly. But they were always close. His brothers were his best childhood friends. His home was once the nucleus of his happiness. Tres suddenly missed his brothers, missed his father deep in his soul. He couldn’t reach his father, but what of his brothers? Craig, the devil may care boy and master of mayhem disappeared long ago. Today, he seemed at best aloof, and at worst sarcastic and politely hostile. Happy go lucky morphed into cold and harsh. Something changed in his brother. Tres realized while he pined for Jenna, he overlooked the changes. Maybe he never got over being shipped off to military school by their mom when he turned sixteen. Tres questioned his mother about his enrollment, and she justified the move by explaining that Craig needed more discipline than Tres or Trip. Discipline she, as a single mother, could not provide. Tres had been so self-centered he didn’t press her any further or maintain contact with his brother. He accepted without question, the colder, harder brother that returned for brief visits, and who eventually refused to come home at all. Tres longed for the smiling Craig, the loyal, good humored boy with a natural mind for mischief.

And Trip, the baby. Tres also missed his floppy-haired youngest brother. Trip had all the charms of a pup. His clumsy sweetness earned him the nickname Trip leaving many to forget his true name was Christian. Tres knew from Grams’s reports that Trip enrolled in Virginia Tech, but he couldn’t remember what his littlest brother was majoring in. Surely, it was computers. He reluctantly admitted to himself he had no idea.

His brothers were strangers to him. His son was a stranger to him. The woman he loved a stranger who neither trusted nor believed in him. And it hurt.

How could life have changed so much? How could a family so close drift so far apart? Was it simply the death of his father?

Maybe the vividness and fondness of the memories made life after his father’s passing seem so lonely. It taught him the harsh reality of before and after moments. He remembered the tumultuous days following his father’s heart attack. Their peaceful home changed instantly as mourners clogged the rooms. The normally rowdy home buzzed with a new sound, the strangely hollow hum of hushed adult conversation. When the house emptied and distant relatives returned to their homes, the pattern of life for the Coulter family transformed into something completely different from anything Tres knew before. His mother went to work at his father’s law firm, moving her mother, his Grams, into the house to care for him and his brothers.