Dream of You (22 page)

             
“Fine,” she lied, dabbing furiously at her eyes. She could feel the tears pulling back, shame overriding her other emotions, but she couldn’t take back the wet look of her eyes. Thankfully it was dark.

             
The sheets rustled as Jordan shifted, and then her bedside lamp came on with a soft
click
, warm, yellow light flooding the room.
Oh, no
, she thought as his knuckle hooked under her chin and he tipped her head up.

             
His expression was guarded, unsure maybe, and Ellie closed her eyes and ducked away from his touch, pressing her cheek to his chest again. This was not what she’d wanted at all – freaking him out so soon with a bunch of useless tears. This was exactly why she was single. Forget being independent, she was alone because no one would have her, and Jordan was figuring out why all because she couldn’t control her stupid tear ducts.

             
“Ellie.” His voice was careful. “What’s wrong?”

             
“Nothing.”

             
“So, those are, what, tears of joy? I know I’m not that good in bed.”

             
She had to smile. “It’s nothing, I promise.”

             
“You sure?”

             
“Yes.”

             
She waited, breath held, until he finally doused the lamp.

             
“I don’t have time for a boy in my life.”
In truth, she didn’t have the heart for one.

19

             
J
o was starting to feel like a human again. Three weeks wracked with terrible nausea and now, as she checked her slightly pale complexion in the mirror while she washed her hands, she could say that she was “green,” but not reduced to sleeping on the bathroom floor. She’d felt lazy, like a neglectful wife and sloth member of the household, but everyone had stroked her hair like when she was a little girl and assured her she was neither of those things. She’d been most worried about Tam, but he’d stowed his issues somewhere for the time being.

             
“I’m sorry all I do is barf in front of you,” she’d told him one night through a raw throat.

             
He’d grinned. “After fourteen years, you don’t think a little puke would drive me off, do you?”

             
It had been a little line that had brought her a lot of comfort. Fourteen years – minus the four of their Cold War – of being attached like Siamese twins. She supposed she should give him more credit than she did. You didn’t share the same chewed piece of gum with a person and hold onto any sterile, romantic notions about them. Tam had been a part of every sweaty, smelly-socked, dog pile sleepover she’d had with her brothers as a kid. He’d pulled splinters out of her palms and cleaned out her skinned knees with his spit. The baby was big and scary and catapulting them further into adulthood, but Tam, she’d reminded herself over the past weeks, was her friend first, sometimes even her brother second before he was her hubby, and either way, a little vomit wasn’t going to traumatize him.

             
She toweled off her hands and exited the restroom, reentering the controlled chaos that was Honeygood Veterinary Clinic on any given day.

A Jack Russell and a L
ab were snarling at one another at the ends of their leashes, the cat owner between them clutching the handle of her cat crate with white knuckles. Dogs back in the kennel barked nonstop, and the din reached all the way up to the waiting room. The phones rang incessantly and the desk staff was frazzled. If it weren’t for the animals, Jo would have quit long ago; some days even with the animals, she thought digging ditches along the side of the freeway sounded more peaceful.

“Jo,” Rebecca called from behind the front counter. She had a phone held in offering, one hand covering the receiver. “There’s someone asking if anyone named ‘Wales’ works here. You
wanna talk to him?”

Jo frowned, but stepped up to the counter and took the phone. Her last name wasn’t as common as Smith or Williams, not to mention what were the odds of a random stranger searching for a random Wales at
Honeygood of all places?

“This is Jo Wales,” she greeted as she put the phone to her ear.

She was met by silence. At first. Jo plugged up her other ear with a knuckle and strained to hear.

“Hello?” she prodded.

She heard breathing. Raspy, shallow breathing that raised all the thin hairs on her arms to attention.

“Hello?” she tried again.

There was a click as the other line disconnected and then the dial tone flooded her ear.

“It was a he?” she asked Rebecca as she handed the phone back.

Rebecca was distracted, juggling three folders worth of paperwork and now the phone too. “Yeah. Just some guy. He didn’t say who he was.” She slapped the phone back in its cradle, clearly dismissing her, and Jo headed back toward the treatment labs tugging at her lower lip with her teeth.

She was not by nature a paranoid person, so she stuck a mental Post-It on the incident, reminding herself to mention it to someone besides overprotective Tam, and filed it away for later.

**

             
In his business law class, they’d discussed lawsuits and the subsequent seizure of assets. Tam had then been forced into the awareness that at twenty-seven, he had all of two assets: his mother’s ruby which now belonged to Jo, and his car. And he doubted anyone would want to seize a ’65 Malibu, even if the paint job was cherry.

             
Alone in the driveway, elbow deep in soapy water, he watched suds and water bead up on the hood of his sky blue Chevy asset and allowed himself a moment to peel back the plastic veneer of confidence he’d cooked up for Jo, and wallowed in the doubt and stress that was fast rotting his brain.

             
Who had he been kidding? Nothing in his life ever worked as planned. How had he thought marrying a girl without a dime to his name and moving in with her folks would turn out for the best?

             
Randy appeared behind him, his reflection a boxy, looming, Frankenstein-esque shadow in the car’s wet window. “She cleans up good,” he said of the car. He had one of those deep, booming, hokey and irreverent dad voices, unapologetic in his fathering of all the world. “If you ever decide to get rid of her, I want first dibs.”

             
Tam smiled humorlessly down at his own reflection as he leaned over the hood and passed his sponge across it again, soaping over the blue, elongated image of his face. “Yeah, that’ll happen soon. I’m in the market for a Beemer, after all.”

             
Randy snorted. “You wouldn’t wanna look like Mikey, would ya?”

             
His smile became a little more true. “Definitely not.”

             
“Good. I don’t want one of those prick-mobiles parked in my drive full time.”

             
Generally, there was something removed and soothing about a bucket, sponge, birdsong in the trees overhead and a thousand soap bubble rainbows across a car. But as Tam moved around the front of the Malibu, pausing to wet his sponge again, an uneasiness that had everything to do with his father-in-law settled over him. He had been waiting, anxious to the point of nightmares, for Randy to finally drop his opinion – or criticism – of Jo’s pregnancy. Tam had been a thirteen-year-old, breath-holding kid again on the sofa the afternoon Delta had announced the baby news to the room. He’d felt the heavy, harsh weight of Randy’s gaze passing over him, but thus far, the big man had only offered his general support and congratulations…to the two of them. Always kind in front of Jo. But Tam was waiting for his own personal tearing of a new asshole, and he was struck with the sudden knowledge that the moment had arrived.

             
As if on cue, Randy lifted his head from his inspection of the car, eyes zeroing across the hood to Tam.

             
Shit
.

             
He glanced away again, hands finding his jeans pockets. “Jo’s feeling better, isn’t she?”

             
So he was going to ease into it then. He wasn’t very good at that – he had nothing on his oldest son – but so be it.

             
“Yeah, she is.” Tam kept his tone neutral.

             
“She looks better. Her color’s coming back.”

             
“Uh-huh.”

             
There was the squeak of Randy’s finger against the window glass as he scraped at bug splatter with his nail. “Poor thing. I know she didn’t mean for this to happen right now.”

             
Tam’s conscience was writhing. “Neither of us meant for it to,” he said, too defensively, before he could stop himself. He paused, suds squeezing between his fingers and trickling across the front quarter panel, and shot a glance to Randy.

             
He expected a frown and got a lopsided grin instead. “I know that, kid.”

             
Relief was just out of reach, dancing beyond his fingertips, as Tam lifted his brows and asked, “You do?”

             
Of course Randy knew. Everyone with a pulse knew. But Tam wanted, needed even, to hear that the head of the family he’d finally become an official part of didn’t hold a grudge. Careless, reckless, knocking-up-his-girl sex could have easily been an unforgivable sin considering his financial status. He wanted to know just how unforgivable that was in the eyes of his girl’s father.

             
The grin stretched. “Yeah, I do. You were always my responsible one.”

             
Tam exhaled in a rush, his lungs empty and shaking afterward. To be absolved and folded into the batter of Walker children all in one breath was better than he could have hoped for.

             
“You’re married; it happens.”

             
“It’s not like we weren’t being careful,” Tam said. “She was taking these antibiotics and something about her pills and - ”

             
Randy stayed him with a hand. “Don’t need all the details.”

             
“Right.”

             
A beat of silence passed and Tam resumed his car washing, adrenaline he hadn’t known was building bleeding out of his system. So relieved, he wasn’t sure he heard Randy correctly when he spoke next.

             
“Joanna was an accident, you know.”

             
Tam paused. “What?”

             
“Well, that sounds bad. ‘Surprise’ more like I guess. Beth and I weren’t gonna have another.”

             
Jordan and Jo were nine months apart, which had always screamed of surprise.

             
“But I think she’s a pretty good surprise, don’t you?”

             
Tam nodded, gaze dropping back to his task. He knew what Randy was getting at, and by the old man’s logic, there was no denying the obvious. Yes, he was damn glad the Walkers had slipped up and had their fifth – she was sort of the center of his universe – but it had been different for Randy and Beth. With four kids already, both of them working, a house and two cars and retirement plans – they’d been equipped for another baby. What had one more been?

             
“I don’t want to disappoint her,” he said to the driver’s side window of his Chevy. “And I just can’t climb out of the hole.”

             
“You’re twenty-seven,” Randy said. “And the hole’s not as deep as you think.”

             
He shot his father-in-law a
yeah right
look over the top of the car. “Mike’s twenty-seven, and look where he is. And Walt…” Well, no good ever came from talking about
that
brother-in-law.

             
Randy snorted. “Neither of them ever had to deal with what you did, Tammy. And I’m not sure they could have either.” His always jovial, big, square face creased with seriousness. “You’re doing fine, kid. Take a breath.”

             
Tam forced a humorless laugh. “Yeah. Easier said than done.”

             
Out on the street, all the way up at the stop sign at the corner, the low rumble of Jo’s Mustang was just becoming audible. The ’02 Mustang had been an Ebay steal she’d gone halvsies on with her parents. The Flowmaster pipes she’d secretly wanted had been a Christmas present. She loved the thing, even if the neighbors didn’t. In the mornings, between the Malibu, the Mustang and Jordan’s Jeep, the drive sounded like a stock car race, and gouty old Mr. Powell next door was always scowling over the fence on his way back from the mailbox.