The Dark Light of Day (29 page)

Tall, blonde and leather issues, to be specific.

My housing situation had changed, too. I had that on my mind more than anything else. After Nan’s house had been foreclosed on, it sat empty for years as the economy continued to slide downward. Eventually, the bank sold it to some big time investor who fixed it up
and turned it over to a property management company to find a
renter. When I passed the window of the Matlacha Realty office and saw the
familiar pink siding and white shutters on the picture taped to their
window, I ran inside to sign the lease right then and there. After a few phone calls to the owner, they accepted my check and handed me the keys.

I didn’t even have a chance to tell Frank about the house before he died. I knew he would have been really happy for us though.

Georgia and I had officially moved in a few days earlier. There
were still boxes piled in the corner of her room that I hadn’t had a chance to unpack yet. Actually, there were boxes I hadn’t unpacked in
every
room.

I gave Georgia a bath before tucking her into bed in the very
same
room where Nan had so generously given me the deadbolt I
requested on the first night I’d stayed with her. I’d felt safe there, like my heart could finally lay calm and quiet. Now, the framed photo above my
little girl’s bed made my heart skip a beat and my stomach double
over.

I wish she hadn’t asked me to hang it up for her.

A few months earlier, I’d been sitting on the couch in the
apartment sorting through some old photos in my scrap box when Georgia
turned from the cartoon she was watching and asked if she had a
daddy. I had no idea how to answer that. Telling her about Owen
was out of the question. I was trying to figure out the right way to tell her she actually
didn’t
have a daddy when she pulled a picture from the bottom of the box I was sorting.

“Mama, is this my daddy?” She had asked, holding up my
favorite
picture of Jake. He was on his bike, a cigarette hanging from his
mouth. He had just parked in the lot and pushed his sunglasses to the top of his head. He wasn’t quite smiling, but there was happiness there. It captured exactly who he was. My heart fluttered just looking at him. I had almost forgotten the effect his appearance had on me.

Almost, but not quite.

My childhood had been built on lies and mistrust. I decided then that I wasn’t going to continue that cycle with my daughter.

“No, baby girl, he’s not,” I answered. “I wish he was though.” My eyes watered.

“Don’t cry, Mama. We can pretend he is. Okay?”

“Pretend?” I asked. Georgia had such a huge imagination.

“Yeah. We just pretend he’s my daddy.”

I couldn’t say no to her liquid green eyes. “Just for pretend
though, okay, baby girl? He’s not your daddy. Not really.”

She looked down at the picture then back at me, smiling like
she’d
just ransacked an ice cream truck. She also lost all interest in
knowing anything more about who her father was. She was satisfied with her new picture and the promise of a game we could play together.

“Yes, Mama. Just pretend.” Then, she ran off to her room with the picture in hand. It wasn’t until I changed the sheets on her bed a few days later when I realized she’d kept it under her pillow.

The day we moved into Nan’s house she requested a frame for her picture and announced she wanted it hung over her bed. I didn’t want to do it. It took the pretending a little too far for my liking. But,
the picture went up, and each night when I put Georgia to sleep I
came face to face with what had almost been.

Before I started tackling the boxes in the kitchen, I changed into shorts and a tank top. I was in need of some comfort, so I threw my old black hoodie on top of it all.

I wondered what Nan would have said if she could have seen all of the changes her little house had been through. I was sad to see the old avocado appliances and white cabinets were gone, but I wasn’t about to complain about the stainless steel and cherry wood that had
taken their place. The stained and ripped linoleum floors had also
been
replaced with a dark hard wood in varying shades. Nan’s home,
even in its new and improved state with its landscaping overhaul and new coat of paint, still looked like Nan’s house…just mixed with an ad from Island Home Magazine.

I slipped out of the house through the back sliding glass doors. The investor had torn out the old screened in lanai and built a new outdoor kitchen area, complete with a brick paver deck, state of the
art grill, mini-fridge, sink area, and granite counter tops. But the
view
was as spectacular as ever, with the mangroves floating over the
dark blue waters of the Coral Pines River. It seemed to be the only thing left completely unchanged.

I opened the grill and felt around for the key I had taped to the inside of the hood. I used it to open the lock on the drawer below the grill meant to house cooking tools.

I had no such tools.

I retrieved the old tin pencil box I hid the day we moved in. The
box had been doodled on and taped together more times than I
could
remember. It contained a small yellow glass pipe, a lighter, and a
dime bag. I’d tried to be one of those women who had a glass of wine at the end of the day.

I’d never developed a taste for it.

I’d bought a couple of plastic reclining chairs from a garage sale to use on the patio. Those chairs, plus a twin bed and mattress for Georgia and a mattress and box-spring for my room, were all the furniture we had. I had planned on buying myself a real bed, along with a couch and table for the living room by perusing the weekend flea market and swap meet the week before.

My plans for more furniture had been derailed when Frank died.

I’d been calling him all throughout that day to tell him about having rented Nan’s house, and to tell him I would be by with his groceries a little later than normal. After two hours with no call back, I had a sick feeling that something was wrong.

I pulled up to his house and banged on the front door. When he
didn’t answer, I tried the door...which was already unlocked. As
soon as I had entered the house, I knew he was dead. It seemed to radiate a chill throughout the space.

The smell only reinforced that.

I found Frank’s body upstairs in the guest bathroom. He’d been sitting, fully clothed, in a pink tiled bathtub with no water, clutching a picture frame in one hand and an empty bottle of Wild Turkey in
the other. His eyes were closed and if I didn’t have that feeling of
death all around me, I would have just thought he was sleeping.

I went downstairs to use the phone and called the sheriff’s
station. I
waited upstairs, sitting on the bathroom rug on the floor next to
Frank. He’d been alone for such a long time. I didn’t want him to be alone anymore.

It felt wrong to have them come pick him up with the bottle in
his hand so I worked it out of his grip and set it on the counter. For a few minutes, I troubled over what I should do with the picture frame resting on his chest, clutched in his other hand. I finally decided not to take a chance with whatever it was getting lost when they moved him. I promised him then that I would make sure the frame would be buried with him.

I lifted his elbow just slightly and wiggled the frame free. I sat back on the fuzzy rug and flipped the frame over. It was one of those
split frames that held three pictures. The first was of Jake, it looked to be right after high school. He looked a little younger than I
remembered him and his hair was cropped close to his head. With a
carefree smile on his face he held a fishing pole in one hand, and in the other he held up the end of his fishing line with a huge sail-cat dangling from the hook. I had touched the picture and smiled to myself. I loved seeing that he’d been happy once with his family. His life hadn’t always revolved around the bad; there seemed to have been plenty of good in that house once too.

The middle picture was of Marlena and Mason, I had seen the same picture on the desk in Frank’s office.

The last picture took me by surprise.

It was me.

I was sitting on the worn leather couch of the apartment, holding
a very new born Georgia. I was smiling, but you could see the
genuine fear in my eyes. Frank had taken the picture with my camera on the day I brought Georgia home from the hospital. I had it printed and hung it on the refrigerator of the apartment. I had no clue Frank had a copy, or how he went about getting it. It told me all I needed to know about how important we’d been to him.

I hoped he died knowing how important he was to us.

Frank had all three pictures tucked in his suit jacket when he
was buried, along with a picture Georgia drew for him. I made sure of it.

I turned on the small radio I kept on the patio to my favorite
country station, keeping the volume low so I wouldn’t wake
Georgia. I collapsed onto one of my new-old chairs and packed a bowl. I sat back, lit it up, and inhaled the smoke, savoring the familiar heat in
my lungs. I held it inside as long as I could before exhaling it
through both my nose and mouth.

I enjoyed my high, and allowed my mind to drift to the one
person I tried so hard not to think about. I traced the design of the metal pendant around my neck. I’d never been able to bring myself to take the damn thing off.

I couldn’t help but think about how great a father Jake would
have been to Georgia. If he’d stayed that day, I doubt I’d have
decided to keep her after all. The thought caused my heart to seize in my
chest. I was definitely not going to let myself go there. Georgia was
the best thing that ever happened to me, and I refused to think about a world without her in it.

I was lifted out of the comfort of my high by the sound of heavy
steps in the grass beside the house. The small patio light only lit the immediate space I occupied, but it cast shadows over everything
else.

“Who’s there?” As soon as the words left my mouth, I knew the answer.

He stood as still as stone, just a few steps from the patio. I heard the familiar sound of his Zippo lighter and saw the red glow from the end of his cigarette. I was frozen in my chair. I opened my mouth to speak and nothing came out.

“Hey,” he said. His familiar voice washing over me like comfort I hadn’t known since he left.

I breathed deeply and gathered enough brain power to speak.
“Hey,” I responded, trying my best to keep my voice level. “You
don’t
have to creep up on me in the dark, you know. You could get
yourself hurt.” I mustered as much false confidence as I could, but inside I was shaking like a paint mixer.

Jake stepped out of the dark shadows and into the light. The
picture above Georgia’s wall was nothing compared to the real
thing. He was still dressed all in black, but the muscles beneath his tight t-shirt were larger than I remembered. They strained against the thin material. “Oh yeah?” he asked. “How you gonna hurt me?”

He flinched when he realized what he’d said. I pretended not to notice.

“With this,” I said as I pulled my .22 from my beach bag.

“Wow. You’re packing now?” He looked amused. “Let me see
that thing.” I handed it over to him, and he inspected it carefully, turning
it over in his hand. “Nice. You do know you shouldn’t hand your
pistol over to someone just because they ask, right? You could be the one who gets hurt.”

“Oh yeah?” I asked, using his words. “How you gonna hurt
me?”

He laughed.

His hair was longer than it had been when he left. His face was harder and looked older than four years should have made it. But his eyes were as blue and amazing as ever. I had to squeeze my legs together to rid myself of the tingle that was happening all over me. “Maybe handing over my gun is part of my whole plan of defense. I just give it to people and ask them to hold it for me. It distracts them while I run away.”

For the first time in over four years, the smile I’d been seeing in my dreams was now right in front of me.

I almost fell over.

I was seventeen all over again.

“I would probably come up with a plan B if I were you,” he said, pushing his hair behind his ear.

I liked the longer hair. It was hot... and
I
was getting hot.
Too
hot.
I took off my hoodie and threw it on the chair next to me. The night breeze kissed my skin, and I sighed in relief. “That’s better,” I
muttered.

“Bee!” Jake exclaimed. His eyes went wide.

My heart fluttered when I heard him say my nickname again.

“What?” I asked, hoping I hadn’t dropped my pipe.

“Your arm. Holy shit, you did it.” He reached out to me and
right
before he was about to touch me he pulled back. “It’s fucking
amazing,” he said softly.

My tattoos. He was gawking at my tattoos. After Georgia was
born, I’d decided to get the sleeve Jake and I had talked about. It started at my shoulder and went down my right arm, ending at my wrist. I’d spent endless hours in the tattoo chair, starting with a recreation of one of my favorite sunset pictures I’d taken myself on my shoulder, followed by the angel of death riding a motorcycle down my bicep. Underneath that was
the scar
painting I loved so much, and on my
forearm was The Hellen Keller quote I’d used to describe how I felt
about Jake. Its winding script stopped just short of my wrist. Each
line and mark offered by my scars had been used as part of the
design.
When people looked at me, they were looking at the marks I’d
chosen
for myself, not the marks others had forced upon me. It’d been liberating.