Desert Gift (18 page)

Good question. He loved Connor more than anything in the world. Jack wanted to revisit every moment he had lost his temper with him or made a bonehead parental decision or missed an opportunity to spend five minutes with him. He would redo those moments. He would make everything right so that his child never experienced wounds that he had unintentionally inflicted because he was, like every father before him, enrolled in on-the-job training. Mistakes came with the territory.

In this moment now—could he protect Connor from further harm?

Of course not. All he could do was tell him the truth.

“No, Con, I still believe that marriage is good. When I met your mother twenty-five years ago, my world changed. She made it a better place. If Emma makes your world a better place, marry her. Live in that better place.”

A silent moment passed and then Connor said, “What happened to your better place?”

Jack rolled his eyes. “I’ll get back to you on that one.”

Connor groaned. “Big help you are. See ya, Dad.”

“See you, Son. Give your Emma a hug from me.”

After he hung up the phone, Jack sat still. Stronger than the pull on his conscience to get back to work was the pull of his son’s question.

What had happened to his better place?

A litany of responses sprang to mind. They all began with
Jill
.

Jill did this. Jill did that. Jill did not do this. Jill did not do that. Jill wanted this. Jill wanted that. Jill. Jill. Jill.

And what was Jack doing the whole time?

Evidently not caring about the disintegration of his better place.

Chapter 23

Sweetwater Springs

In the passenger seat of her sister’s car, ignoring the desert landscape zipping by them, Jill lifted her cell phone high and checked its screen for the umpteenth time. “Godforsaken country.”

“Which you are totally missing.” Viv reached over and poked her arm. “Look out the window.”

Jill looked. “I see dirt, rocks, sticks that call themselves bushes, and an empty two-lane highway going nowhere. What’s your point?”

“It’s beautiful.”

“And God hath forsook it. There is no cell service.” She sighed, lowered the phone, and bit a fingernail. “I can’t believe I let you convince me to bring my bags. All I want to do is spend a few hours with Pops. I need a Pops fix.”

“Give it a rest, Jill. You need serious time off. You cannot take care of Jack, Connor, your friends, and your fans right now. You need to take care of yourself. Famous people do this all the time.” She threw her a grin. “Think of it as rehab.”

“With Mom and Pops.”

“Right. Well, with Pops, anyway. He is the ultimate rehabber. I’ll run interference for you with Mom.”

“Do I have an addiction?”

“That phone.”

Jill straightened her sunglasses and leaned against the seat.
Rehab
felt like an apropos term.

Yesterday’s events were the icing on the cake of despair. Jack’s no-show at their special place in Hollywood on their special anniversary deeply pained her, although it had not been a complete surprise. But add the encounter with Connor, and she was brought to the end of herself. She was left with no choice but to face a brutal reality about her family and friends.

Her husband and son had shut her out of their lives. Her career was either on hold or nonexistent. Viv, Marty, Gretchen, and other friends with whom she’d talked or e-mailed in recent days all had their own lives to get on with. She really had nowhere to go except back to the warthog’s pen or to her dad. If she chose the animal, she wouldn’t have to contend with Daisy; but Skip won out anyway.

Viv had called him and relayed the lowdown on his elder daughter’s life. She said Jill would be coming for an indefinite stay.

He replied, “No problemo, kiddo,” and insisted that Jill not wait to come next week with Viv’s scheduled senior trip. She needed to get home ASAP, as in
now
.

Skip Wagner’s fatherly track record put every
Father Knows Best
–type dad to shame. The sisters trusted his opinion.

Viv offered to drive her the two hours over to Sweetwater Springs. Then, practical as ever, she cautioned Jill against unnecessarily spending money. Although Jack made a decent living, their monthly expenses had increased with his move out of the house. Women in Jill’s position—separated with little or no income of their own—counted pennies. Jill should not even consider renting a car or staying in a hotel or even paying for Viv’s gas.

That was when Jill burst into tears. Marty left the house. Viv congratulated her on the emotional display. It was far better than the zombie she’d been mimicking since Connor’s good-bye. Not even Agnes had been able to crack Jill’s exterior during the bus trip back from Hollywood.

“Yee-haw!” Viv let out a squeal now and the car shot forward like a cannonball.

They barreled down a familiar stretch of highway, Viv’s lead foot firmly in place. Jill’s stomach tickled as they hit a series of smooth roller-coaster dips at full speed.

“Vivian! Slow down!”

Her sister only laughed.

It was Wagner tradition to drive NASCAR-style into and out of Sweetwater Springs. Their father was not a reckless driver, but he’d fly along fast enough to make his little girls giggle and their mother fuss. Jill couldn’t find her giggle today.

A few moments later the road flattened out and stretched like a ribbon before them, disappearing into a mirage of billowy silver curtains. The town was close now, although it lay hidden from view, behind those curtains.

At the age of eighteen, Jill had hightailed it the other direction, hitting those dips far above the speed limit. With a population of two thousand, her hometown did not resonate with her dreams. In San Diego she lived and worked with her grandmother. The following year, just as eager to live in the city, Viv joined her.

Since then, Jill had visited Sweetwater sporadically. Sometimes Jack accompanied her. Connor loved the desert and as a teen often went during school breaks by himself.

Odd, Jill thought, how as a girl she couldn’t wait to leave the small town in the middle of nowhere and how her big-city son could probably live in it happily ever after.

But with a French wife?

A chill went through her. Wife.

No. Connor and what’s-her-face were engaged. That did not mean imminent matrimony. It did not even mean certain matrimony.

Where was he now? Had he called? Had he listened to the apologetic voice mail she left last night? Should she leave another?

Jill checked her phone again. “I have a message!”

Viv gasped. “Oh, happy day! Sweetwater is connected to the outside world!”

Jill ignored the gibe and keyed into her messages. “It’s a text. From Gretchen. She says, ‘Someone from Hope Church wants to talk. I gave her your number ’cause you really need to listen to her. Love you.’”

“You don’t
really need
to do anything related to work, Jillie.” Viv glanced at her. “Get that through your thick head.”

“Fine. I don’t really want to talk to anyone about work anyway.”

“Put the phone down.”

“I have to see if Jack or Connor called.” She scrolled through a few missed calls from friends. One unknown number; maybe it belonged to that teacher. Nothing from her husband or son.

Nothing.

Viv reached over and snatched the phone from her hand. “This only makes you feel worse. From now on anyone who wants to reach you can go through me or Pops. Until you’re ready, this cell stays with me.”

“Do you want my laptop too?”

“Nope.”

Then Jill remembered. “They don’t have Internet, do they? They don’t even have a computer.”

Viv smiled gently. “You’ll live through the withdrawal.”

Jill wondered if she would even notice. She felt like the landscape looked—all grays and browns, sticks pretending to be live plants. Both Sweetwater Springs and her future were ahead somewhere, out of sight and unimaginable.

* * *

The instant Viv parked the car, Jill’s door opened and she tumbled into her father’s waiting embrace.

“What took you so long, Jaws?”

Her ear pressed against his chest, she listened to the rumble of his deep voice. She shut her eyes and caught faint scents of Old Spice, desert air, and automotive grease.

“Huh?” He held her at arm’s length and gazed at her with brown eyes squinted nearly shut. His narrow, rugged face hadn’t changed all that much in the forty-plus years she had known it.

She felt ten years old. It wasn’t exactly a bad feeling to be called on the carpet and expected to spill whatever painful truth was undoing her. “Pride.”

“Yep. That would do it.” He tilted his head and gray bristles on his chin caught the sunlight. “You know you never need to hide from me and your mother.”

“Oh, Pops! I look like a fool to everyone who’s ever heard me teach. I couldn’t stand to have you two see me like that.”

“Nasty thing, pride.” He squeezed her shoulders and let go. “We love you, foolishness and all.”

Her bottom lip trembled. “Jack doesn’t. He doesn’t love me anymore.”

“Sure he does. He just doesn’t like you.”

“Thanks. That helps a heap.”

Skip grinned, the familiar gap between his two front teeth endearing and comforting.

She realized Viv must have gone inside to greet their mother and was glad for the chance to receive Skip’s comfort before Daisy’s typical
tsk
and head shake.

“Jillie, I aim to say one thing straight off and be done with it.”

She winced. She knew what was coming because she’d heard it all her life. It was his answer for everything from a hangnail to slow business at his service station. It had become her answer for everything as well. It was why Gretchen accused her of making lemonade from life’s lemons.

“Pops, I don’t want to hear it. All things do not work together for our good. Two and a half weeks ago my life got split into
before
and
after
. Before and after Jack left me. I don’t believe in Romans 8:28 anymore.”

“Doesn’t take away its truth. You’re in a rough spot right now, but shake-ups remind us we are not in control. We need ’em, and by my calculations, you haven’t had one in a mighty long time.”

“My husband wanting a divorce is a little more than ‘a rough spot.’”

“Then God must love you extra, darlin’.”

“You are not going to make me smile.”

He chuckled. “Don’t expect to. Not today. Just glad you’re here, Jillie. Just glad you’re here.” He turned and began walking up the driveway.

She watched him go, his gait as loping as ever. He wore, like always, a ball cap, white T-shirt, blue jeans, and cowboy boots. When he was a small boy, his family had moved to Sweetwater. It was scarcely a village back then, but on the cusp of expanding into a town that catered to tourists more interested in nature than glitz. His father opened the first service station, which her father ran until five years ago. Figuring his girls were never going to be interested in it, he sold it.

Jill looked beyond him toward the house. The home she’d grown up in was a small ranch-style with attached garage, the stucco still the color of dirty beige. A scrub oak and a sycamore provided scant shade in the rocky dirt yard. Hardy perennials grew willy-nilly, some in full spring bloom. A red blossom sat atop a fat barrel cactus. An ocotillo cactus soared at least twenty feet high, its spindly arms sticking up and out every which way like Medusa’s hair with tiny orange flowers. Sagebrushes gave off their sharp scent.

The best part of Sweetwater was the mountains. They surrounded the town like an embrace, a ring of colorful, steep, boulder-laden peaks. Some were purple, some pink, some blue, some gray. They rose to meet the sky’s blue vault and seemed to hold between them a hush, a quiet so deep it sometimes made her ears ring.

“Jillie.” Skip waited for her by the house. “Mom baked pies.”

Pies. Ten o’clock in the morning and her mother would offer them pie and sweet iced tea. Like the house and the gap between her father’s teeth, some things never changed.

Suddenly it felt good to be in a place where things never changed.

* * *

Jill laid her fork on the yellow dessert plate. Not even a crumb of crust remained. Not even a trace of blueberry blue or raspberry red marred the surface. Nope, she’d all but licked it clean in the middle of the morning in her mother’s kitchen.

Daisy pointed a spatula at it. “Want some more?”

“Oh, Mom.” She groaned. “No. Thanks.” Why had she eaten the entire huge piece of pie? Was she into comfort food now? Until thirty minutes ago, the thought of food turned her stomach. If this was her reaction to the warm fuzzies of home, she was in trouble.

“Don’t you like it?” Across the table Daisy batted her blue eyes. Differentiating between her tones had always been a challenge. Was this one a tease or an accusation? “I got up at the crack of dawn to bake it before church.”

Looking at her mother was like looking at a prune version of herself. The eyes and mouth were the same, the creases around them just a little deeper. The blonde shade of her short hair was more platinum than ash. Although no taller than Jill, Daisy was tinier.

Jill glanced at her family seated around the kitchen table. Some gene had gone haywire. Viv and their father were tall and rangy, their mother short and skinny; she herself was short and counted calories. The three of them could sit around and eat pie until the cows came home and not store one fat cell.

Jill said, “Is that gym still in town?”

Daisy said, “I’m going to need the car every day this week. Your father works on cars day and night, but you know we only have one now that we actually drive.”

Jill tuned out the ensuing monologue about schedules and the woes of one car for a retired couple in a stoplight-free town that took three minutes to drive across.

At last her dad mentioned that he’d been restoring an old car, a Chevy 396 Super Sport convertible. “It’s red.”

Daisy rolled her eyes. “Can you believe it? The man is seventy-one years old. I asked him, why bother with a midlife crisis now?” She paused and her eyes bulged. “Jack doesn’t have a red sports car, does he?”