LOVING HER SOUL MATE (18 page)

And John, shocking himself, began
to panic.
 
“Shay,” he said, stopping her
from moving off of him.
 
“Please don’t
leave.”

“I can’t do this,” she said,
shaking her hand, fighting back the tears.
 
“I can’t deal with a cheater, John, I’m telling you I can’t.”

“I’m not a cheater.
 
I mean, not now.”

That was what they all said.
 
Shay moved to get off of him again.
 

“Shay, what is it?” he asked,
refusing to release his hold on her.
 
“Talk to me.”

“I told you!
 
I can’t do it.
 
I want a man who believes I’m enough for
him.
  
Not a man who has to have me and
all of these other women.
 
I can’t deal
with that.
 
I won’t deal with that.
 
Every man I’ve ever been with has cheated on
me and I’m not going through that again.”

“But I won’t be that way,
Shay.
 
Not with you.
 
These women I’m sleeping around with are bed
warmers.
 
That’s it.
 
They know it and I know it.
 
And as for my ex-wife, she and I were a train
wreck, I mean it.
 
We should have never
gotten married in the first place.
 
We
only did it because of. . .”
 
John’s
heart began to pound.
 
He couldn’t
believe he almost went there.

Shay stared at him.
 
“Because of what, John?” she asked.

John felt helpless.
 
He felt as if he had to expose himself fully,
warts and all, or lose Shay forever.
 
For
some powerful reason he couldn’t even verbalize, he couldn’t lose Shay.
 
He knew it like he knew his name.

“Because of our son,” he said.

Shay didn’t expect that
answer.
 
“Your son?
 
You have a son?”

A pain so devastating came onto
John’s handsome face that even Shay could feel the force of his pain.
 
“I
had
a son,” he said.

Shay’s body froze.
 
She didn’t expect this.
 
She did not expect this man to tell her that
he had a dead child.

John hadn’t expected to tell it,
either.
 
Not ever.
 
Or at least, in Shay’s
case, not this soon.
 
But he knew
he had to tell it all.
 
“I was a cop in
Baton Rouge at the time, and Blair was my girlfriend.
 
One of my girlfriends,” he added.
 
Shay didn’t respond.
 
His pain, and the pain she suddenly felt, was
too excruciating for her to respond.
 
She
just stared at him.
 

“Blair told me she was
pregnant.
 
We fought and then made love,
that was pretty much our relationship up to that point, but I married her
because I felt it was the right thing to do.
 
And I was committed to the relationship early on.
 
Completely committed.
 
Until, one night, while Blair was away in
Virginia attending her sorority sister’s wedding, I left work extremely late,
was tired on my feet, and drove over to the babysitter’s to get our three-month
old son.
 
I put the baby in the car
seat.”
 

He stopped.
 

Shay could barely breathe.

John frowned.
 
Even though he was staring at Shay, she knew
he was staring through her, at a night long ago.
 
“I put my son in the car seat.
 
But I was so exhausted.
 
I was so drained that I forgot to fasten
it.”
  
Tears began to appear in John’s
eyes.
 
“I forgot to fasten him in,
Shay.
 
My own son.
 
I forgot to fasten his car seat in.
 
I just sat him in it.
 
I just. . . But I fastened mine.
 
Oh, yeah, I got behind the wheel and fastened
my own
got
damn seatbelt like
clockwork.”
 

He frowned again.
 
Settled back down.
 
“I apparently dozed off at the wheel because
just as I was opening my eyes I blew through a red light.
 
I slammed on brakes but I was T-boned by this
other car.
 
And my child, my son, my
life, was thrown through the windshield.”

Shay’s heart dropped.

“The guy driving the other car had
on his seat belt, too, so he was fine.
 
I
didn’t have a scratch on me.
 
The other
guy didn’t have a scratch on him.
 
But my
son. . .”
 
He paused again.
 
Frowned again.
 
“The authorities on the scene said my child
was like a flying projectile.
 
They said
he was like some unsecured flying missile.
 
Unsecured was how they put it.
 
I
didn’t secure my son.
 
I failed to
protect my own child.
 
And he died as a
direct result of my failure.”

John steeled himself.
 
The pain was still so raw it felt as if it had
happened six days ago, not six years ago.
 

“What was his name?” Shay asked
him.

John closed his eyes.
 
Opened them again.
 
“Malcolm,” he said.
 
“We called him Mal.
 
Sometimes I’d call him Malkie.”

“Did they charge you?” Shay
asked.
 
She had to know it all.
 
She had to know every piece of this
devastating puzzle called John Malone.

“They should have.
 
Everybody knew they should have.
 
But I was a cop.
 
You know how it goes.
 
They didn’t even file charges against
me.
 
It was just an unfortunate accident they
said.
 
So, instead of going to prison for
murder like I should have, I packed up my wife and we left Baton Rouge.
 
The memories were too thick there anyway.
 
It was as if the air itself reminded us of
our loss.
 
And my part
in that loss.
 
We couldn’t stay
even if we willed ourselves to stay.
 
So
I accepted a promotion here in Brady.
 
It
was so ironic to me, but so typical.
 
My
child dies, I don’t get a scratch, and I get a promotion on top of that.”

That’s because God knows, even if you don’t, that you’re not as
hopeless as you think you are
, Shay wanted
to say.
 
“Your wife came with you to
Brady?” she asked instead.

John paused on that, as if she’d
just asked a loaded question.
 
“Yes,” he
said.

“So she doesn’t blame you?”

John snorted.
 
“She blames me every day of every hour of
every second of her bitter life.
 
And
since I couldn’t agree more with her assessment, I felt it only proper to bring
her along to constantly remind me of what a miserable son-of-a-bitch I truly
am.”

The sadness of that statement
broke Shay’s heart.
 
And that
compassionate look in Shay’s eyes caused tears to trail down John’s face.
 
He never dreamed he’d be comfortable enough
to share his pain with any one.

“Welcome to my nightmare,” he said
to her with a smile that was meant to be joyless.
 
Shay wiped his tears away and stared at
him.
 
All she ever saw when she saw John
Malone was toughness personified.
 
Handsome, great
bod,
and tough.
 
Now she saw the other side too.
 

She kissed him.
 

“I don’t think you’re a miserable
lout, John Malone,” she said to him.
 

John looked at her, as if he was
seeking an approval he knew he didn’t deserved.
 

“I think you’re a flawed man, a
wounded man, and sometimes a very difficult man.
 
But you’re a good man too, I think.
 
And that’s the part of you we’ve got to make
sure super-cedes all the rest.”

John stared at her, his heart
recovering.
 
“Does that mean you’re not
going to leave me?”

Shay almost smiled.
 
It went from her fear that he was about to
leave her, to the other way around.

“I don’t know what it is about
you, kid,” Shay said, causing John to smile, “but there’s something about you,
that’s for sure.
 
And I want to stick
around to see if I’m right.”
 

John wanted to cry again. He
couldn’t believe how emotional he’d become.
 

Shay became dead serious too.
 
“But the first time you decide that I’m not
enough for you, the very first time, John Malone, I’m out of here,
I
declare I am.
 
I
can’t deal with a cheater.
 
I’m not one
of those women who can look the other way and pretend it ain’t so.
 
I’m not that woman.
 
I’m not her.
 
So if you can’t be faithful, say so now.
 
And we’ll shake hands and end this right now.”

John didn’t know why he wanted to
give it a go when everything he’d ever loved always seemed to disintegrate in
his hands.
 
His prayer was that with Shay
it would be different.
 
That
he
would be different.
 
And somehow he felt a strong urge, a strong
need to try.
 
“You won’t have to worry
about that,” he promised her.

Shay smiled and laid her head on
his shoulder.
 
He rested his hand on the
side of her hair, wrapping her tightly in his arms.
 

But they both felt slightly more
terrified than euphoric.

EIGHT

Ronnie Burk’s Toyota Prius turned
onto Bluestone Road to conduct what he privately called his morning
drive-by.
 
He had to go out of his way to
get there, because Shay’s home was not on his way to work.
 
But he made the effort anyway.
 
It made him feel good, like he was looking
out for her.
 
For over a month now he’d
been doing it: drive over to Mickey D’s and get his morning coffee, stop by the
Piggly Wiggly to get that apple strudel he loved to eat, and then drive by Shay
Turner’s house on Bluestone Road before getting back on Kincaid to make it to
work.
 

Although he and Shay were both
scheduled to begin work at nine a.m., he always arrived much earlier.
 
Usually by seven.
 
Which meant, to do his morning drive-by, he
had to leave his home as early as six.

But on this morning, when he drove
past Shay’s home, he couldn’t believe his eyes.
 
A big black and gray truck was parked on her driveway.
 

“What the
fuck
,” he said inwardly as he drove to the end of the street and
turned back around.
 
He stopped his
vehicle a couple houses down from Shay’s house and stared at the truck, his
hands now gripping his steering wheel.
 

For nearly half an hour he just
sat there, staring at that truck, at that house, at the window he knew was her
bedroom window.
 
And sure enough, just as
he suspected, the light came on in that bedroom and then, less than ten minutes
later, the front door of Shay’s house opened and John Malone came bounding down
the steps.
 

Ronnie could not believe his
eyes.
 
He thought it was John’s truck all
along, but he refused to believe that a sensible girl like Shay would be that
stupid.
 
But there it was.
 
John Malone in the flesh.
 
After undoubtedly pounding
the flesh off of little Shay.
 
How
could she, Ronnie thought, as John got into his big Chevy pickup, cranked up,
and drove away.
 

Ronnie hit his steering
wheel.
 

“How could she!” he screamed.

Shay arrived at the Brady Tribune
newsroom with a little extra pep in her step.
 
She had just dropped Aunt Rae off at the Senior Center, enduring her
you’re late
routine even though she
wasn’t late, and was now ready to get to work.
 
Ed Barrington was the first face she encountered.