The Bachelor's Sweetheart (11 page)

“See you Sunday at Edna and Harry's,” his father called back at him.

Harry's eighty-fifth birthday party
. There was no way he could skip that.

“Yeah, Sunday.” He kicked a stone out of his way. Maybe he could get Tessa to come with him. He was sure his grandmother would have invited her grandmother, and his brothers would have their wives with them. He'd text Tessa when he got inside.

Josh bounded up the apartment stairs and remembered Tessa was doing something with a friend tonight. He'd wait until tomorrow. But he had to do something to get a grip on his life, control his father's influence on it—since the old man showed up everywhere Josh turned.

A paper blew off his desk as he passed it on his way to the bedroom to change into jeans and a T-shirt for the barbecue. The list of Al-Anon meetings that he'd printed out last night. He skimmed it. There was one in Elizabethtown tonight at seven.

Might as well check it out
. He didn't really want to go to the barbecue without Tessa, and what did he have to lose? The details said it was a step meeting. Steps sounded logical to him. Steps to guide him back into control.

An hour and a half later Josh stood at the door of the meeting room in the Old Stone Church in Elizabethtown. He glanced through the window. The room was set up with chairs in rows, as he'd hoped, rather than around a table, and he didn't see anyone he knew right off. He rolled his shoulders. Good. He could keep his distance. He twisted the doorknob, slipped inside and slid into a chair in the corner a couple of rows from the back. While the clock up front clicked off the five minutes until seven, Josh heard the door open and shut a few more times and people take seats behind him.

Finally, a man stepped up in front and introduced himself as Roger. “Welcome everyone, especially if you're joining us for the first time.”

Josh squirmed as Roger panned the room, starting with him.

“We hope you'll find in this fellowship the help and friendship we've been privileged to enjoy. We urge you to try our program. It has helped many of us find solutions that lead to serenity. So much depends on our own attitudes, and as we learn to place our problem in its true perspective, we find it loses its power to dominate our thoughts and our lives.”

That sounded good to Josh.

“We're a step group. We focus our meetings on the Twelve Steps, one of Al-Anon's three Legacies, along with Al-Anon's Twelve Traditions and Twelve Concepts of Service. We start our meeting with our group motto.” He pointed at a whiteboard on the wall behind him.

Most of the room joined in saying, “I didn't cause it. I can't cure it. And I can't control it.”

“Let's do that again with the new people,” Roger said.

“I didn't cause it. I can't cure it,” Josh said in a low voice, stumbling on the last, “and I can't control it.” That was why he'd come, for control. He pushed forward in his seat, ready to stand and leave when a voice in his head said
give it a chance
,
echoing his earlier thought.
What do you have to lose
? He slid back and prayed.
Lord, if that was You, show me a reason to stay.

“Tonight we're discussing the second step, coming to believe that a power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity.”

Josh had his reason to stay. He understood God having a plan for him, leading him to sanity. If He wanted him to stay, Josh would.

“Who wants to share?” Roger asked. “Al-Anon is an anonymous fellowship. Everything said here, in the group meeting and member-to-member, must be held in confidence. Only in this way can we feel free to say what's on our minds and in our hearts and help one another.”

Even with anonymity, Josh couldn't imagine sharing. He was here to learn from them, come to a few meetings to get the information he needed and be done.

A woman stood. “I'm Sandy.”

“Hi, Sandy,” the group said.

For the next hour, Josh listened to the others share and discuss the evening's step.

Roger stood in front again and said, “It's after eight. Anyone who wants more information or has questions can come up after our closing. We close with the Serenity Prayer.” Again, he pointed at the whiteboard, and everyone stood.

When they'd finished the prayer, Josh wished he could say his heart was lighter, but it wasn't. He went to the table in front of the room to pick up some literature. Maybe he would understand everything better if he studied before coming to another meeting.

“Good to see you here.” Another man standing by the table welcomed Josh and introduced himself.

“Josh. Have we met?” Josh tightened his grip on the flyer he held and checked his memory. Did he know this guy from a GreenSpaces job or his camp-flipping renovations? He'd hoped Elizabethtown was far enough from Paradox and Schroon Lake to avoid running into anyone he knew.

“I don't think so.” The man shook his head. “Will we see you next week?”

“Sure.” Josh loosened his hold on the flyer. If he came back. But he had to do something.

Avoiding eye contact with the people lingering in the hall, he managed to walk to the stairs leading down to the church lobby at a normal pace. He blinked. Tessa stood in the lobby, talking with another woman. He'd know her anywhere, even from the back. She must have been at the meeting, come in later and sat behind him.

She went to Al-Anon meetings. That's why she was so big on them and AA.

He looked again to make sure he wasn't wanting the woman to be Tessa so he'd have someone to explain things and come with him next time. He took the steps two at a time. Weird that she hadn't seen him sitting ahead of her in the meeting.

“Tessa,” he said as he hit the floor.

She turned, eyes wide.

He drew back. She must not want people to know she went to Al-Anon.
Of course.
Otherwise, she would have invited him to come with her. But he wasn't
people
. He was her close friend or thought he was. Why had she told him she had plans with a friend? Maybe the meeting was the plans. She went to Al-Anon. So what? What was the big secret about that?

* * *

At the sound of Josh's voice, every ounce of air in Tessa's lungs whooshed out. She gasped to draw some back in.

“Are you okay?” Maura asked.

“No. Excuse me.” She felt her sponsor's eyes on her as she forced one foot in front of the other until she and Josh had closed the space between them.

“Hey.” Josh followed his greeting with a soft smile. “Didn't you see me in the meeting?”

“No,” she answered in all honesty.

“I was over in the left corner, near the back. Since I didn't see you, I figured you came in after me and sat in the far back.”

“Josh... I...” She took his hand and pulled him toward a small empty sitting room off the lobby. It had a wall of windows facing the lobby but would still give them some privacy to talk. His fingers closed around hers, the enveloping strength and warmth squeezing her heart until she couldn't bear the pain.

“What?” His forehead creased. “Are you okay?”

As okay as I can be.
She gulped a breath and fixated on the cross hanging on the far wall of the room.
Dear Lord, stand with me. Guide me to say, do, what's best for Josh and his healing
.

She pulled her gaze from the cross. “Please sit.”

He lowered himself into one of the overstuffed chairs while she crossed the room and looked out the window at the front lawn of the church.

“What's wrong? You're scaring me,” he said when she didn't immediately turn back to face his question.

She turned and swallowed the lump in her throat. Not much scared Josh, at least, that he'd admit to. But he couldn't be half as scared as she was. His wide-eyed panic challenged that thought.

“Sit down and tell me. We're buds. I can take it, whatever you have to say.” His normal bravado returned.

Tessa walked back and stood beside him, unable to look him in the eye. She rested her hand on the back of his chair. “I wasn't at your Al-Anon meeting. I was at another meeting.” She dug her nails into the soft padding of the chair back. “An Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.”

Josh looked over his shoulder at her, his eyes darkening with understanding.

“Yes,” she said, fighting to keep the pain from her voice. “I'm a recovering alcoholic like your father. Five years sober.”
As if that would make any difference to Josh.
Hadn't he said once a drunk, always a drunk?

Josh pushed himself from the chair so roughly, it flipped back onto the floor. “No,” he shouted.

Several people in the lobby, including Maura and Josh's father, looked in the windowed wall.

Tessa touched Josh's arm, and he jerked it away. “I can't deal with this. You. I can't.” He charged out of the room, brushing by Maura and the others in the lobby, glancing back at her through the glass before disappearing out the main lobby door.

Anger, hurt, she could take. But the look of pure disgust on his face cut her to the core in a way that might not ever heal. She crumpled in a chair, buried her face in her hands and wanted a drink with a fierceness she hadn't felt in years.

The sound of the door opening and closing made her lift her head. Maura walked over, righted the other chair and sat.

“That wasn't how I wanted him to find out,” Tessa said.

“I know.”

“I should have told Josh long ago, like you said.”

“That time's gone. It's a new day. Focus on tonight,” Maura said. “Do you still want to go for coffee with Pete and Jerry? I think you should.”

Josh's father.
He'd been at the meeting tonight, and when she pointed him out to Maura, her sponsor had suggested they include him and his sponsor, Pete, in their usual after-meeting coffee group.

Tessa looked out the window. “Where is Jerry? He didn't go after Josh, I hope.” She shuddered at what that confrontation could do to both of the Donnellys.

“He did, but Pete stopped him. They went ahead to the diner.”

Tessa bent and picked up her bag from the floor. “I'll go. I don't trust myself to go home.”

“Do you want to pray?” Maura asked.

What she wanted was to crawl into a hole somewhere, preferably with a bottle of something. “I think I'd better.” For the first time in a very long time, Tessa had doubts that it would help.

By the time Tessa pulled her car behind Maura's SUV in the diner parking lot, she felt marginally more in control. Maura waited at the door while she trudged her way across the parking lot.

“If you'd rather not go in,” Maura said, “I can text Pete, and we can go back to my house instead.”

“That would be the easy way out,” Tessa said more to herself than her friend.

The corner of Maura's mouth quirked up. “The idea isn't to make things as hard for yourself as you can.”

“But that's my usual approach.” Tessa stepped by Maura and opened the door. “And getting to know his father better may be the only way I have to salvage my friendship with Josh.”

“Keep in mind that friendship involves two people. If he can't accept you for who you are...”

Tessa lifted her hand. “I'm only too aware of that, and I don't know whether he can accept me or if I should even expect him to.”

Maura shook her head, a signal that she wasn't going to join her pity party. “There's Jerry in the back booth.”

Tessa's gut clenched when she saw Jerry motion to them with a smile that was pure Josh.
Or Josh's smile was pure Jerry
.

“Where's Pete?” Maura asked as she slid into the booth seat after Tessa.

“He has an early day tomorrow. I assured him I was in good hands with you ladies.”

Tessa swallowed the distaste of Josh's father flirting with them, everything she'd heard about his womanizing rushing through her head.

“Yeah,” Maura said. “Pete mentioned he'd taken on a second job as a substitute morning school bus driver.”

Tessa stared at Maura's non-reaction to Jerry's comment. He was old enough to be her father. Didn't she catch the inflection in his words? Jerry's phrasing was different, but his voice sounded exactly like Josh's did when he was talking up a woman.

“He told me they had more openings, but I don't have ten years of a clean license like he does. I just got mine back. Never had a license in California after my old New York one expired. The tip Pete gave me about the painting gig at GreenSpaces panned out, though.”

Tessa set her jaw.
GreenSpaces, the garage apartment and the trim on Grandma's house. Everywhere you can be in Josh's face
.

“And—” he nodded to her “—Tessa's grandmother was kind enough to offer me more work,” Jerry said, “on the flimsy reference that I used to mow her mother's lawn for her when I was a kid.”

“Sounds like a good start establishing your business,” Maura said.

The arrival of their waitress saved Tessa from having to add her encouragement. She admitted to herself she'd agree if Jerry wasn't the catalyst that had started the chain reaction that was causing her friendship with Josh—her life—to implode.

“What can I get you?” the waitress asked.

“Do you have chamomile tea?” Tessa asked.

“Sure do,” the waitress answered.

“I'll take a cup.”

Jerry glanced at Maura, who was reading a text on her phone. “Make mine coffee, black,” he said.

Another way he was like Josh.
She had to stop the comparisons before she fueled her tension into a killer headache.

“Nothing for me.” Maura put away her phone, and the waitress left. “That text was from my husband. He got a call from work to come in and fix an equipment malfunction. I have to meet him on his way over there and retrieve the kidlets. That offer to stay at my house tonight is still open, Tessa.”