Sweet Surrender (33 page)

“What?” Jessie stared at her mother in shock.

“I’m taking back my maiden name when this is all over. The divorce, I mean.”

“That’s the first time I’ve ever heard you talk about it acceptingly. What happened today?”

Her mother set down her spoon and Jessie could have kicked herself. She should have let the questions be until after she’d eaten.

“It was a horrible scene. He showed up on my doorstep with those damn divorce papers. Driving a fancy car and wearing a suit if you can believe it. He left the car running with his girlfriend and their two girls inside, as if ending our marriage wouldn’t take more than two seconds. Like it was nothing more than paying the electric bill or cancelling the newspaper. I guess he thought I wouldn’t put up a fuss, but I did. I’m ashamed to say I acted like a lunatic in front of those innocent girls. Like with you, Jessie, children shouldn’t have to bear witness to their parents’ drama.”

“Tell me what happened? I imagine it was awful.”

“I screamed and cursed, saying all the things I wanted to for years. I even threw things. Remember that old golf trophy of his, the one that sat in the living room for years collecting dust?”

“You didn’t?” Jessie breathed.

“I did.” As she nodded, Jessie noted her eyes twinkling, a tad maliciously, but surely that was better than tears and despair. “It’s in the yard now in a million pieces along with the picture of us from our wedding and the one when we bought the diner. I wish you could have seen him, Jess. He ran out of there so fast, like he was being shot at, his arms over his head, straight back to his car, but he left the papers. They’re in my purse.” She scanned the room for it, starting to rise.

“I’ll get it, Lily. It’s by the front door.”

After Marc left, she murmured, “He’s nice, Jessie.”

“Yes, he is very nice.”

“Don’t trust it, baby girl. Your dad was nice in the beginning too.”

A chill ran down her spine at her mother’s words. There went that niggling fear that had lingered hauntingly in the back of her mind since falling in love and accepting Marc’s proposal. Her mind conjured an image of herself, twenty years from now: alone, broken, and pitiful, like her mother who had trusted the man in her life when he told her he loved her and that it would be forever.

“I need wine,” Jess stated suddenly, horrified by her thoughts. She went to the fridge and took out a bottle of red, grabbing Marc a beer without thinking. Staring down at it absently as she walked back to the table, she wondered when he had become automatic in her mind.

By the time he came back, they were both halfway through their first glass. He eyed her with concern as he sat, placing her mother’s purse on the table beside her. Soon Jessie was pouring a second glass for her mom and for herself, and before he could say anything, she raised her glass and took a healthy swig.

“Here they are,” Lily said, unaware of the interplay between the other two. “They’re a bit crumpled but still legible. There’s a lot of legal mumbo-jumbo that I don’t understand. Of course, I didn’t really try to read it because I was blubbering like an abandoned wife at the time.” She lifted her glass and polished it off. “Soon to be ex-wife is more accurate, I guess, huh?”

She poured herself a refill as Jessie sipped from her own glass, watching as her mother slowly sank deeper into depression and misery. Her eyes misted with tears as they wandered to Marc’s, searching for her lifeline, hoping that her mother’s despair wouldn’t drag her down again. He returned her gaze directly, his unwaveringly stable and constant. Like an immovable rock—her rock.

Her mother went on, unhappily chugging her wine. “I spent my whole life believing it was better to have loved and lost than to have never have loved at all. I’ve decided that’s a bunch of crap put out by people who have never gone through this pain, or possibly by the greeting card companies. Either way, it’s a load of bull. Except for you, my sweet Jessica, I rue the day that bastard came into my life and robbed me of everything.”

Having finished her third glass of wine, she was a bit loopy and had lost much of her reserve. She gave Marc a disapproving glare before accusing, “What’s to keep you from doing the same thing to my baby girl?”

“Mom—” Jessie tried to interject, but her mother’s tongue had been loosened by the wine and she kept going.

“You’ll give my girl a few good years, making her love you, only to break her heart when you decide to go searching for your lost youth with some young bimbo. It’s always the same sad shitty song.”

“I’d never do that to Jessie, Lily. She’s the love of my life.”

As they so often did, his words filled Jessie with warmth. They were unnecessary however; as his eyes burned into hers, she knew that he loved her, but the nagging fear in the back of her mind plagued her. That was today. What of the future? With so much stacked against them, different backgrounds, different goals, and family trouble, was love enough?

“Yeah? Her bastard father gave me the same empty platitudes thirty years ago. Look at me now. My love simply wasn’t enough and his surely didn’t last.” Sadly, her mother’s embittered words articulated her own uncertain thoughts.

Her mother’s toxic discourse was grating on her nerves. The long ingrained negativity was self-destructive and unfortunately, without another adult to show her a different way as she grew up, Jessie had developed the same cynical outlook. She realized that on an intellectual level, but the doubts were there all the same. She struggled against it to this day, feeling it eating at her from within.

Her tear-filled eyes flashed to Marc, who was watching her intently. Did he see her mother in her? His intense gaze didn’t waver.

“I have more scruples than her father did evidently.”

Although she was a mass of insecurity, she managed to launch a defense for the man she loved.

“It’s true, mom. I’m so sorry for what dad did to you… to us, but you can’t paint all men with the same brush. There are good marriages out there, Jared’s parents for one. They’ve been happily married for over thirty years. At the engagement party, they danced as if they were newlyweds.”

“Smoke and mirrors, baby girl.”

A terrible sense of foreboding crept up Jessie’s spine. What she said was true. Her father had been the perfect father and husband, yet he’d hidden his true self away from his wife and daughter. He convinced them he was a caring man, that he loved them, while carrying on with another woman and plotting his escape. It was an act, a facade. He showed them what he wanted them to see, an illusion of love and security as he bided his time, and then like the master magician he was, without an abracadabra or a puff of smoke, he was gone.

“Obviously, we’ll have to agree to disagree here until I prove my constancy and commitment.”

“Yeah, I’ll look you up in twenty years or so.”

“Mom, that’s enough!”

“I agree, but first things first. We need a change of tone in here, which means no more wine.” Grabbing the half-empty bottle of wine and the two glasses, one of which he had to retrieve from Lily’s tight grip, Marc took them to the sink. “Wine is a depressant.”

“Thanks for the news bulletin, Dr. Trent.”

“Mom,” Jessie scolded. “Be nice to him. I’m sorry, Marc.”

“It’s okay,
cara
. Alcohol has an unpredictable effect on people.” He glanced at Jessie from where he stood at the counter, giving her a reassuring look.

She gave a little sniffle; this conversation and the wine were dragging her down.

“I know it turns some women into watering pots. That’s not a sexist remark, by the way; it’s a scientific fact.”

“I’m the living proof of that, huh?” She wiped away the tear that had overflowed onto her cheek.

When he came back to the table, he sat beside her and covered her hand with his own, holding it firmly.

Her mother had the decency to flush. “Sorry, Marc, it’s not your fault I have crap taste in men and had an incredibly crappy day.”

“No worries, Lily. The second part of my plan is to get you settled into one of our guest rooms. You are not going back out in this snow.”

“Is there a third, handsome?” Jessie knew from the twinkle in his beautiful eyes that there was indeed a step three. With Marc, if there was a first, there was always a second and oftentimes a third.

“Of course,” he said with a wink, before turning to Lily. “Third, we get you a good lawyer. I have one in mind, who is quite adept with legal remedies. Let’s take the asshat to the cleaners and make him pay.”

“Hmm… I may have been wrong about your man, baby girl. I like the way he thinks.”

This is what Stacy had jokingly recommended. Should she let him do it? By the conspiratorial smile he was sharing with his mother, it seemed she didn’t have a choice. Besides, they hadn’t asked her and sure as heck didn’t appear open to other suggestions at this point. As she mulled it around in her head, she had to admit, she liked the sound of legal remedies, too.

Watch out, General Asshole, your time of comeuppance is at hand.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Her headlights reflected off the aluminum underpinning of her mother’s singlewide trailer as she turned into the driveway. As she switched off the ignition, her phone rang. It was Marc. She knew without looking at the screen, but she did anyway.

It was ten-thirty and most likely, he’d only now arrived home. Finding her gone, the note on the counter along with her engagement ring, she could only imagine his reaction. The ringing stopped and a moment later a series of beeps sounded. He’d left a message.

With a trembling hand, she thumbed the screen and let it play. The sound of his voice wrapped around her, making her heart constrict in agony.

“Jessie, I need you to call me. I love you. We can fix what is broken but we have to talk this through, baby.” A long pause followed. “I need to know where you are, that you’re safe,
bella mia
.” Another pause. “I’m calling your mother.”

She sat in the rapidly cooling car, holding her breath as she watched her mother’s windows. A light blinked on. A few seconds later, she saw a shadow pass by the window. Her mom still had a wall-mounted landline phone and Jessie could tell she was crossing to answer it. The curtains moved and her mother’s face appeared, her laser-sharp eyes zoned in and fixed on her through the windshield. She could see her talking into the receiver as the curtains fell shut.

Jessie closed her eyes, trying to will her rapidly pounding pulse to slow. She sat frozen, motionless, and unable to breathe, as though a thousand-pound weight was crushing her chest. Her mind was reeling, imagining what her mother and Marc had said. Had her mother told him she was here? Of course she was here, where else would she go? Besides, she’d told him in her note, hadn’t she? Written quickly and through a deluge of tears, she wasn’t sure what her rambling letter had said.

She jerked in alarm, letting out a startled shriek as knuckles rapped sharply on her side glass. Her hand clutched her chest, over her racing heart, as her eyes locked with her mother. That was all it took before she broke down into loud, gut-wrenching sobs. Her mom jerked the car door open and Jessie collapsed into her arms, a weeping, trembling mess.

“I’m so sorry, my sweet baby girl,” Lily whispered in her ear.

* * *

“Jessie,” her mother called through the door. “Marc’s here.”

She rushed to her bedroom door and twisted the lock. “No,” she murmured at the crack in the door, “tell him I’m sorry, but I can’t see him now.”

“It’s been a week. You need to talk to him. He’s as torn up about this as you.”

“I can’t. Not yet.” She knew if she saw him, she’d cave, falling into his arms and begging to come home. Home… what did that word mean anymore? The bedroom she was in now, that she’d lived in for over a decade, never felt like home. How odd that she considered his house, where she’d lived for such a short time, her home.

It’s because he’s there, you idiot.

The despised inner voice had been bitching at her persistently, calling her ten times a fool as it echoed in her head.

“Please, mom. Tell him I’ll call, but I need more time.”

“All right, Jessie. You’re going to have to do it soon though, baby girl, before he explodes.”

She listened as her mother’s footsteps receded. What she heard next was muffled; nothing was clear except Marc’s anger. A moment later it was quiet, then she heard the door close and a car start in the drive a few moments later. She rushed to the window, pulling aside the edge of the curtain. As she peeked through the thin gap, her stomach clenched as she saw him sitting in his car, his head down, resting on his folded hands on the steering wheel. As if feeling her gaze, his head came up and his eyes homed in on her window. She wanted to step back but she couldn’t, frozen in place. He couldn’t possibly see her. The lights were out and the room was dark. Even so, his eyes lingered on her window for a long time. She could tell when he finally gave up. His shoulders slumped and his head fell back against the headrest, his eyes squinched tight. A moment later, he backed out and drove away.

Staggering back until she felt the wall at her back, she slid to the floor, her legs feeling like jelly, no longer able to hold up her weight. She didn’t know how long she sat there before her mother came into her room. Not caring how she’d gotten in with the door locked, Jessie welcomed Lily’s arm around her shoulders as she sat down in the floor beside her. She held her for a long time.

“This is what I was like when your dad left.”

Jessie didn’t reply, but she remembered that time vividly. She’d come home to find her mother in bed, staring at the wall, her eyes fixed in shock. Tears streaming down her face although she didn’t make a sound. Similar to how Jessie was now.

“The difference is that my man was gone, baby girl. He didn’t want me anymore. Your man is trying desperately to get through to you, Jessica Lynn.”

She stiffened. “He’s very charming. I see he got to you too.”