Turn My World Upside Down: Jo's Story (33 page)

When his wife, Sylvia, died so long ago, she’d taken most of his heart with her. He’d been lost in his own misery—until Grace. She’d helped him to live again. She’d shown him that love wasn’t only for the young.

“What brings you out here?” he asked, guiding her to a chair in the far corner of the Stevenson yard.

The roar of the cement truck moaned on as the workers scooped the wet stuff out with shovels.

“I called Mike,” Grace said, pitching her voice to be heard over that roar. “She told me where I could find you. I had to see you, Henry.”

“Grace.” He went down on one knee in front of her and took both of her hands in his. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she said, and squeezed his hands. “And everything.”

For the first time, he noticed that her hair wasn’t entirely perfect today. A strand or two was out of place and the makeup she never left the house without had been slapped on hurriedly. “You’re starting to worry me.”

“No, no. It’s not like that. Oh, Henry.” She pulled her hands free to cup his bearded face. “I’m such a fool.”

“Says who?”

“Me, you wonderful man. But thank you for automatically
leaping to my defense. Though I don’t deserve it.” She laughed and he felt better, but things were still pretty strange.

“You want to tell me what’s going on, Grace?”

“I’ve come to my senses, Henry. Finally and at long last, I’ve come to my senses.”

“Still not making things clear, honey.”

“I know, but I will. You’ve asked me to marry you three times, haven’t you?”

“Yes.” He said it gruffly, remembering how she’d turned him down every time. It was the only flaw he’d ever found in her. This refusal to share his name. “And you said no all three times. What’s your point, Grace?”

“My point is that
I
want to ask you this time, Henry. I want you to forgive me for being so stubborn and prideful and foolish. For not having the strength of heart that
you
have.”

“Grace—”

“I’m asking you to marry me, Henry. Soon.”

Pleasure swelled in his chest and his heart felt full enough to burst, but he had to know. “You’ve always said you preferred living in sin with me. What changed your mind?”

She leaned into him, kissed him hard and fast and then smiled wistfully. “I realized, Henry, that the only sin between us was the one I kept making. The sin of not appreciating your love. The sin of cowardice. I was too afraid to try again. Too afraid of my past to see a future.”

He smiled. “And now?”

“Now, the future is
all
I see. And my future is
you
. I
love
you, Henry Marconi, and I would be so proud to be your wife.”

Emotion clogged his throat and filled his eyes. Carefully, as if she were made of spun sugar, he pulled her into his arms and held her close, next to his heart.

“Marry me, Gracie,
amore mio
, my love.”

She pulled back, looked him in the eye, and crying, said, “Yes, please.”

“Well, that’s perfect, isn’t it?”

“You should be happy for Papa,” Sam told Jo as she marched in familiar circles around Mike’s sofa.

“I am happy for him,” Jo said, thinking about the look on her father’s face that evening when he’d broken the news. Heck, even Nana had bent far enough to wish him luck now that he would no longer be sinning.

“But don’t you think it’s a little pathetic? On the same day I crash and burn with Cash, my
father
gets engaged? What kind of universe is this?”
Oh God, oh God
. She wanted to cry, but there just weren’t any more tears. She wanted to scream, but it wouldn’t help. She wanted to go see Cash.

And knew she couldn’t.

“What’d Cash say?” Mike asked the question they’d all been dancing around.

Jo stopped walking, and looked out at Jack, playing catch in the front yard with Lucas. The boy would heal, she thought. And so would she. Eventually. “Doesn’t really matter how he said no, does it?”

She turned back around to look at her sisters as outside, the baseball slammed into the house with a thud.

“The point is, Cash loves me but he’s too damn stubborn to admit it. And short of torture, I can’t think of a way to make him say the words.” Amazingly enough, there
were
a few tears left. She wiped them
away. “Besides, I don’t
want
a man I have to force to love me. So. It’s over.”

“Doesn’t sound over to me,” Sam muttered.

“It will be, as soon as I stop thinking about him,” Jo told her. “Shouldn’t take more than a year or two. Or a dozen.”

“He’s a jerk.”

“Thank you, Sam. He is.”

“He doesn’t deserve you.”

She smiled at Mike. “I told him you said that.”

A second passed, then two, then another. And finally, Jo erupted, breaking the silence with a heartfelt question. “Who wants him, anyway?”

“Uh,
you
?” Mike asked.

She flopped onto the couch. “I hate when you’re right.”

Cash’s eyes felt gritty. Like marbles stuck in a bucket of sand. He reached up and rubbed them with his thumb and forefinger, but it didn’t help. What he
needed
was sleep. But every time he shut his eyes, he saw Josefina. Saying good-bye to him.

For two days—or was it three?—he’d been in a fog. He heard Jo’s voice, saw the disappointment etched onto her features, heard the rumble of the truck engine as she drove out of his life.

Blowing out a heavy breath, Cash ripped a slice of bread into bits and tossed them out onto the surface of the lake. The ducks came close, zeroing in on the free food like missiles on a guidance system. He smiled in spite of the thoughts crashing through his mind like bumper cars with crazed kids at the wheel.

Absently, he continued feeding the ducks while at the same time he sorted through those careening thoughts, trying to find his way again. His road had always been clear to him. He’d known what to do, how to act, what to think.

Now, it seemed as though the more time he put into trying to figure things out, the fuzzier everything got. He tossed a chunk of bread at the male duck, who, instead
of eating it, used his bill to push it at his mate. “Even ol’ Donald there’s got his priorities straighter than you do,” he muttered.

But then Donald Duck, sitting in his little lake, didn’t have to worry about his mate flying off and leaving him. “Or do you?” he asked, tossing the last of the bread at the pair of squawkers. “Do you worry and love her anyway?”

Man, you are in deep trouble when you start having meaningful dialogues with ducks
.

Dropping to the dewy grass at the edge of the lake, he drew his knees up, braced his forearms atop them, and let his empty hands dangle. Cash stared past the reeds, dipping and swaying in front of him, to the center of the lake. He stared blindly at the wind-driven ripples on the cool surface. The morning sunlight glanced off the lake and shot into his already aching eyes, but Cash figured he had the extra pain coming. Christ knew, he’d caused Jo plenty.

But she didn’t understand—nobody did. Not even Grace. And now that she was
engaged
, for God’s sake, to Hank Marconi, she was further from siding with him than ever.

But Grace didn’t matter. It was Jo who had to see what he meant. How he felt. And he didn’t know how in the hell to
make
her see. He remembered exactly why he’d avoided getting close to anyone since losing Diane and her son in college. He’d loved them both with everything he had in him, and when she left him, when she took her child and walked away, Cash had felt as if he’d lost a limb. As if his body, his soul, had been hollowed out.

It had taken months and months to recover, and at
times, he’d doubted he ever would. Everything he’d wanted his whole life, he’d finally found with Diane. And then suddenly, it was all gone again.

When he’d at last reclaimed his life, he’d made a vow to never care that deeply for anyone again. To never again risk that kind of loss. That kind of pain.

Now, those feelings were back and deeper, stronger, than they’d been so long ago. What he felt for Josefina was so much bigger than what he’d been capable of back then, that he knew the pain of losing her would be commensurate. Bigger. Harder. Enough to kill him. Losing her now was hard. Losing her later was unthinkable.

What kind of idiot was he that he hadn’t noticed what had been happening? How had Josefina and her brother become such an integral part of his life? And what the hell could he do about it now?

The rest of his life stretched out in front of him, emptier than he wanted to think about. There would be no Marconis making him nuts. No more Josefina, spitting fire one minute and kissing him brainless the next. No more Jack, laughing and driving him nuts in the workshop.

“You ruined
everything!
”

Startled, Cash turned and watched a furious little boy rushing at him. God, he’d been so wrapped up in his own misery, he hadn’t even heard the kid coming. Pushing to his feet, he was standing when Jack charged him. The cast on his left arm, covered now with names and drawings and fraying at the edge, caught Cash in the center of his chest and the air left him in a whoosh.

“Jack.” He grabbed the boy and held him still,
though the kid was such a mass of fury and emotion, it was like trying to keep hold of a handful of Jell-O.

“Lemme go,” he shouted, kicking out and nailing Cash’s shin with unerring accuracy.

“Hey!” He released him instantly, then reached down to rub his leg. “What’s going on?”

The boy was neat and clean. His hair had been cut, his jeans actually
fit
him, he was wearing a blue shirt with a collar, and it looked as if he’d finally gotten a new pair of sneakers. But his pale blue eyes, so much like his older sister’s, were filled with hot, angry tears and a flush of temper stained his cheeks.

“What’s
wrong
with you?” Jack demanded. “You messed up everything.”

Confusion rattled in Cash’s mind, but dealing with a Marconi always produced that reaction. “You want to tell me what I did?”

“You made Jo
cry
.”

Ah God
. “Jack . . .”

“No!” The boy gave him a one-armed push that didn’t budge him an inch. “It was all gonna be great. Me’n Jo were gonna live here with you and you guys would get married and I could work on the furniture with you and we’d go to my ball games and—”

Cash’s heart took a nosedive. While the adults had been dancing around each other, a little boy had been building dreams. And God, he remembered all too clearly how precious a little boy’s dreams were. How easily shattered. How devastating when grown-ups paid no attention to their destruction.

Jo’d been right about this, too, he thought grimly. He’d become friends with a lonely little boy, then
when things got complicated, he’d bailed. He’d done exactly what had been done to him as a kid. He’d turned his back on affection in favor of clinging to fear. He’d let Jo walk away when everything in him had wanted to beg her to stay.

He’d let pain become his anchor instead of hope.

“Jack,” he said, going down on one knee in the still-damp grass. “I’m really sorry.”

“Sorry doesn’t matter.” His voice broke and Cash wasn’t sure which of them was more shattered by the sound.

“I heard Jo talking to Mike and Sam the other night at Mike’s house.” Jack was talking again, one word tumbling after the other, in a torrent that seemed to be pouring directly from his bruised heart. “She said that you didn’t say you
love
her. Why didn’t you
say
it?”

Cash dipped his head, avoiding the hurt in those eyes, and viciously rubbed the back of his neck. The kid had hit it right on the nose. He
had
ruined everything. He’d had a shot at something great. Something real. And he’d let it slip through his fingers.

“I know you love her. I saw you kissing and stuff.”

“Jack,” he started, then stopped, not knowing what the hell to say next. How to explain to a kid that adults got scared, too? How to tell a little boy that the man he admired had less courage than he did himself?

“My mom used to tell me every day,” Jack rushed on, not giving him a chance. “She said ‘I love you’ were the most important words in the
world
. She said
everybody
knows that. How can you be a grown-up and not know that?”

“It’s not that easy, Jack,” he said, wearily getting to
his feet as the boy stormed at him. Tears spilled over onto flushed cheeks and the kid’s breath huffed like a steam engine.

“Sure it is,” he said, wiping his nose with his forearm and frantically blinking away the tears. “Jo loves you, Cash. I heard her. She told Mike she loves you.”

Something inside Cash shattered, splintered into thousands of jagged shards that tore at his soul, his heart, leaving him bleeding.
God
. She did love him. He’d seen it in her eyes. Heard it in her voice. And hadn’t wanted to trust it. Hadn’t wanted to let go of old pains long enough to grab a chance at joy.

I love you
. He’d never said those words . . . to anyone. Not even to Diane. He’d held them back, waiting, always waiting for the rug to be pulled out from under his feet. He’d locked away his heart, then blamed everyone else for not wanting it.

“You ruined it, Cash,” Jack said, his voice now a painful hush. “And you made Jo cry. A lot. She’s graduating today and she should be happy, but she’s not. ’Cause of
you
.”

Graduation day?

“I’m a Marconi and Jo says Marconis stick together.” Jack lifted his chin and glared up at the man who’d let him down so completely. “So I had to come here and do this.”

He bunched his good right hand into a small, tight fist, then slammed it into Cash’s stomach. It wasn’t much of a blow, but pain shot through him anyway, right down to the soles of his feet.

“I
hate
you for making Jo cry.” Jack turned and ran around to the front of the house.

Cash didn’t move fast enough to stop him, but he
was in time to watch as the hurt little boy climbed onto his bike and rode off in a hurry, spraying up dirt in a rooster tail behind him.