Vampire Blood (3 page)

“Nope,” the old man retorted with a perfectly straight face, but with a twinkle in his eyes. “Just the first fifteen.”

“Ha, ha. Still a joker, huh?” Joey slipped away and served coffee to someone who’d requested it then he came back. “Well, you guys must want something, or you wouldn’t be in a dump like this,” he teased. “I just finished a fresh batch of biscuits, hot from the oven. You two want the usual?”

“Why not?” Jenny shot back. “Biscuits and gravy it is.” Their dad bobbed his head in agreement and disappeared towards the restrooms in the back.

Joey leaned over the counter. “How’s he doing?”

“Oh, he’s doing okay, I guess. This job has really lifted his spirits. We need the money. I just hope he hasn’t bitten off more than he can chew. He’s been pretty tired lately.” Jenny shook her head.

Joey’s head cocked to one side, his eyebrows raised.

“I mean the Albers’ house is a big house, and you know how Dad is on the high places?” A frown shadowed her face.

“Yeah, I know, Sis. You’ve told me, but he’s a grown man, and he never listens to us anyway. He’ll do what he wants.”

“Always,” Jenny sighed, knowing he was right.

“How about that breakfast? I’m hungry, Brother.”

“In a sec.” He hesitated, unsure, and threw in, “How about yourself, Jenny Penny, how are you doing these days?”

The childhood nickname made her smile; her face transformed, and she was pretty. “Fine as frog hair. No complaints.” Her fingers brushed her bangs away from her eyes.

Jenny was the kind of woman who didn’t need makeup; she had a natural beauty that glowed from deep inside her. She always wore the same tiny diamond pierced earrings, a long-ago gift from her first husband and today they reflected the red of her sleeveless T-shirt.

“You working on anything?” he probed.

Jenny’s smile faded, and she felt the hairs on the back of her neck go up. When would they stop asking? Stop making her feel guilty? “Yes, a two-story Victorian house, starting today.”

Joey’s green eyes grew serious. “You know what I mean.”

Yes, she knew what he meant. “Drop it. Just leave me alone, Joey. I will someday. When I’m ready,” she snapped at him, and he drew back like she’d burned him.

“Sorry. Excuse me for living. Just asked. You know it has been a couple of years since your last book. You can’t run away from it forever.”

Jenny glared back at him and clanged her spoon against her cup’s saucer. He shut up.

A couple of years?

More like ten.

It seemed like a hundred. At times, Jenny couldn’t believe that she’d ever written those three novels sitting on her dusty bookcase back at the trailer, or that she had ever been that stupid nitwit
who’d wasted hours, days, months, hunched over that typewriter creating all those pages and pages of ...
meaningless
words. That nonsensical distraction that had deprived her of what had later turned out to have been the short, but precious, time she could have had with her first husband, Jeff, and their child.

She’d been such a fool, seeking fame and fortune when she should have been content with what she had had.

Now those happy days were long gone, and it was too late. She’d missed most of them. Too busy writing. Her fault. Her foolishness. Her punishment.

“I’m only worried about ya, that’s all,” he defended himself. “You’ve been free of that last creep-husband of yours now for a while, nothing to tie you down, and you’ve been back here for months. Doing what, may I ask? Painting houses and bumming around with Dad?”

Jenny’s eyes flashed in hurt and sullen resentment. “I’m trying to make a living, damn it. I have to pay bills and put bread on my table, too, like you and everyone else in this world.” She controlled her tone. “I’m no different than anyone else.”

“Aren’t you?” he asked pointedly. “Let it go,
Jenny,” his voice placating, muffled, so the other customers at the counter wouldn’t hear.

“Jeff didn’t walk out on you all those years ago just because of your writing, your success. No matter what he told you. He left you for another woman.
”
He captured her hand then, muttering over his shoulder for someone who was trying to get his attention to hold their horses, he’d be right with them.

“Denying your gift won’t bring him back, you know. It wasn’t you.
I’ve told you so many times. You’ve only been punishing yourself.”

Jenny turned away from him. It was clear that she didn’t want to hear anymore.

“Okay. I’ll get your breakfast.” He retreated, tossing his head, his ponytail brushing across his shoulders. He hustled into the kitchen, gesturing as he went towards Laurie, his waitress and current girlfriend, to cover the counter.

Her dad had drifted back as Joey had departed, and she looked around in time to catch him exchanging questioning glances with Laurie behind her back.

The petite blond with sharp blue eyes was perceptive for a small-town girl who had never finished high school. She wore a hairdo, lacquered with just under two tons of hairspray, that had gone out of style in the sixties. Though they were about the same age, Jenny, once the straight A college-bound student, hadn’t known her very well. They’d traveled in different circles.

Since Laurie had started dating Joey, Jenny had seen more of her and had gotten to know her. She was a sweet person generally, but nosey as all get out about everyone else’s business but her own.

Joey was infatuated with her. This month, anyway. Then again, Joey changed women like some men changed socks.

Jenny was hoping Laurie would prove the exception and stick around for a while; she liked her, and Laurie seemed to be a good influence on her brother.

“Morning, Jenny. Mister Lacey,” Laurie said cheerfully.

“Morning,” Jenny responded and turned to stare out the window.

Laurie got the message and left her alone. After she’d refilled their cups energetically, she scurried off to take someone else’s order.

“You and Joey had another tiff about somethin’?” her dad snorted as he gulped the fresh coffee. “I recognize that famous sulking face of yours, child.”

“No. He just irks me sometimes, Dad. You know how he can be,” Jenny complained. “Always trying to tell me what I should or shouldn’t do.”

Her dad’s face was blank. He’d never understood her touchiness on certain matters. He had never really understood her at all, a dreamy-eyed, reclusive child, but he’d always been proud of her, even now. He’d always been uncannily attuned to her quicksilver, shifting moods, even if he never knew what had brought them on.

“Never mind, Dad. Let’s just eat and get over to the Albers’ house,” Jenny suggested softly. She hung her head, fiddling absentmindedly with a loose thread on the side of her jeans.

Her father whispered, “See that man over there?” His eyes rolled to the right, and he raised his eyebrows in a bad imitation of Groucho Marx, trying to cheer her up.

Jenny glanced up, a brief smile beginning to form on her lips.

He’d played this game with her since she was a child. People-watching. He’d pick unknown people around them and make up outrageous stories about them just to get her to smile. It was probably what had first started her making up stories in her own head, she had often thought.

“Yes?” She fell into it, a grin finally breaking out fully on her face. She swiveled around on the stool so she could get a sneaky look.

“Not him, the other man.” He canted his head towards the heavyset guy in dirty jeans at the end of the counter, a baseball cap tugged low on his head. He was gobbling down a powdered-sugar donut like it was his last meal. Her father continued, “He is a long-distance truck driver out of Oregon or some such cold place ... and he’s got seven angry wives waiting, all in different states, for him to get his wandering butt home—and sixteen kids.”

Jenny tilted her face, a disbelieving glitter in her eyes, but a giggle bubbling on her lips.

“Yep. When they finally catch him, though, he’ll say he was spirited off once to one of those alien spaceships and has been
confused
ever since.” He rattled off the last six words in a high singsong voice, his eyes opening wide.

The guy caught them looking at him, and he presented Jenny with a dazzling smile and a mistaken, knowing wink.

Jenny broke up, laughing softly into her hand.

“Dad! Don’t make me laugh. I’m not in the mood,” she chided him good-naturedly. He could have been a stand-up comedian, her dad, he was so funny sometimes. He was wasting his life, too, she thought, feeding chickens and fixing other peoples’ houses.

Was there anyone who ever did what they were truly supposed to do with their lives?

“It’s true. I swear.” He raised his hand like he was in court and smiled lopsidedly while she chuckled silently, trying not to call attention to herself.

He could always make her laugh as no one else ever had. Then one of the local teenagers, a young boy with long unruly purple-edged hair, an earring in his ear and skintight leather pants wandered in. Her father made a rueful face. The teenager gawked around, as if he wasn’t sure where he was, and was finally joined by a girl with a ratty looking hairdo, too much eyeliner and a miniskirt that looked like she had forgotten to pull it all the way down.

The kids retreated to a corner booth and started whispering secrets.

“Didn’t think teenagers nowadays got up this early,” her father snickered. Then aside, low, “Why do they have to dress like that, look like that?” He was rocking his head slightly, perturbed.

“I’d be afraid to sit down in that outfit if I was that girl.”

“Then it’s a good thing you’re not.”

He looked directly at Jenny. “You never had to act like that, dress like that to get attention, Jenny. You were a good girl. A smart girl,” he suddenly blurted out.

I was neat, too, and followed the rules,
she thought bitterly.
I couldn’t help that either. Look where it’s gotten me. Nowhere.

Jenny shrugged noncommittally. “That’s how they dress today, Dad,” was all she said.

The teenage girl, who was preening into a tiny hand-held mirror, had long blond hair and a pretty face under the makeup. She reminded Jenny a little of her daughter, Samantha. The daughter who’d left home at sixteen to get married. She’d hated her stepfather, Benjamin, so much she’d taken the first chance offered to get out of the house.

Benjamin had only wanted Jenny, it turned out later, because as a novelist she’d been like a prize trophy he could display and boast about. At first, he barely tolerated her young daughter, and then, over the years of their dreadful marriage, had gradually become downright cruel to the child when Jenny didn’t behave just so.

Jenny had let him. She should never have married him, but after her first husband, Jeff, had left her (was it really over ten years ago now?), she had been so ... vulnerable. Foolish.

She still felt guilt over her daughter. She should have seen how unhappy Samantha had been and done something. Anything. She hadn’t.

Later, after Samantha had left, Jenny’s eyes had been opened, and she’d finally seen through that sadistic lawyer-creep Benjamin’s act. By then it was too late.

Now Samantha was married, almost nineteen, and already had a child of her own. Sometimes Jenny felt cheated. Though she was again on good terms with her daughter, Samantha and her husband had moved far away for his job a year ago. They now lived in Washington near Seattle, and Jenny rarely got to see her or her new grandson. Samantha’s birthday was next week, and Jenny didn’t have the money to visit. A card and a cheap blouse was all she could afford to send.

Jenny really missed her.

She turned on the stool and forced herself to drink her coffee and not think about it anymore. What good did it do?

Their food arrived. Laurie placed it down in front of them with a flourish. “No charge, Joey says.”

His contribution to their tattered finances. “Thanks, Laurie,” Jenny told her with a weak smile.

“You’re welcome.” The waitress picked up a plate of pancakes from the counter and headed for one of the rear tables.

Jenny picked up her fork, began eating, and Joey reappeared.

“Escaped from the kitchen, again, huh?” she grinned at him between bites, her old self.

“Whenever I can.” His eyes told her he’d already forgotten her earlier irritation at him.

Jenny couldn’t stay mad, or sad, for long anymore; especially with Joey. She’d had enough tears in the last ten years. After all, hadn’t she made a New Year’s resolution that she’d put the past behind her and move forward, smiling?

Joey propped his elbows on the counter beside her and watched her eat. A cup of coffee swayed in one hand. The crowd had thinned out, and he was stealing a quick rest. “Good?” he asked.

“Always,” she affirmed.

Their father was still studying the people around them, probably making up stories about them in his head.

Joey automatically refilled their cups from a coffee pot sitting behind him. “Best coffee in the county, Joey,” their dad seconded. “Never could figure out where you got your cooking abilities, though. Your mother can’t boil an egg. Neither can I for that matter.” Their dad surveyed what was left of the crowd around them. “Been doing good business?”