One Reckless Summer (15 page)

Just then, she looked up to see her dad arriving at the table with a platter of pork chops and ears of corn that had come straight from his friend Ed’s corn patch. He lowered it onto the table next to the baked beans she’d whipped up and took a seat. “Honey, are you feeling okay? Is something wrong?”

She swallowed nervously. Oh crap, she’d let her worries show. “I’m fine, Dad.”

He looked unconvinced, his mustache twitching uncertainly. “Are you thinking about Terrence—is that it?”

“Um…”

“You can tell me—it’s only natural he’d still be on your mind.”

She hated to give Terrence the Rat Bastard credit for her mood, but it was a good excuse. “All right then, yeah—I guess I’m thinking about Terrence.”
Oh hell
,
another lie.
This one straight out and verbal. It hurt. To lie to her dad. But she could see no other way.

“Well, I can’t pretend to know how you feel, but my only advice is that you gotta keep busy and think toward the future. What’d you do today?”

Went to Crestview with Sue Ann and took an HIV test.
Which had come back blessedly negative, hallelujah.
“Sue Ann and I…hung out a while.”
Good
,
not a lie. Well
,
except by omission.
She was still trying to make herself believe those didn’t count.

Her father smiled. Poor guy, if he only knew. “It’s nice, you girls getting to spend so much time together again.”

She couldn’t argue that—it really was. Without Sue Ann, she wasn’t sure how she’d be getting through this. And thankfully, Sue Ann had been more relaxed and fun today, in spite of why they were driving to Crestview, and she’d even made a point of digging for more dirt about sex with Mick.

“What else
ya
been up to?” her dad asked as he forked a chop onto her plate, then another onto his.

She could only sigh.
Having sex with Mick Brody. Finding out his escaped convict brother is living right across the lake from us. Or…would that be
dying
right across the lake?
“Um, well…I’ve been doing some reading. And I tidied up that old perennial bed on the side of the house. The dianthus will have more room to spread, and I bet the gladiolus will come up better next year.”

Her dad nodded, smiled some more. She tried to focus on peeling back the husk on her corn and running a small slab of butter over it. “Things are
lookin
’ real nice in the yard,” he said. “I meant to comment. I noticed you’ve been
doin
’ some work on the place.”

“Well, Mom always did like a nice yard.”
Mom?
What the heck was she doing bringing up
Mom
? That was her
dad’s
department, and she was usually the one trying to lead him down a different path. Of course, maybe it was that nearly large-as-life reminder in the living room, looking down on her day and night. It made her feel stuck somewhere between the ages of five and thirty-one at any given moment, on an unpredictable sliding scale. “And I figured it would help you out,” she added, not wanting to get
stuck
on the subject of Mom.

“Well, only if you want to. You know I generally hire Adam Becker’s landscaping outfit to do the upkeep on the place in summer. Just haven’t called ’em lately since we haven’t had enough rain to make the grass grow—no need to mow.”

She smiled. “They can mow, whenever it rains—I’ll do the flowers.”

He grinned in return. “Sounds like a fair deal.” Then he raised his eyebrows. “Have you seen Adam since you’ve been back in town?”

Adam, the boy who stood next to her wearing a crown in that picture on the living room wall. “No, can’t say that I have. He’s married now, right?”

“Recently got divorced,” her dad replied matter-of-factly. Hmm, maybe divorce wasn’t quite the dirty word in Destiny that she’d feared. “Real shame, too, cause him and Sheila have the cutest little twin boys, and I hear it’s been rough on ’em.”

“That
is
a shame.”

“Maybe you
oughta
…call him up or
somethin
’. Just for old times’ sake.”

She smiled knowingly. “Dad, it’s too soon. Probably for him, too.”
And besides
,
I’m having heated sex with Mick Brody in the woods. And in your house.

Her father shrugged. “Figured it was worth a try. And he’s a decent enough
fella
, in case you change your mind.”

She got back to eating. There for a minute, she’d had Mick off her mind—but now he was back, and she was feeling guilty again.

“By the way,” her dad said, “Stan Goodman from the school board stopped by the department the other day. He heard you were in town and wanted to know if it was true.”

Okay, now she stopped eating, corncob balanced between her fingertips. “Uh…
why
?” She knew Stan Goodman, had all her life, but not in any
close
way.

“There’s a teaching job open at the high school. In the science department. One of the teachers had a baby and decided not to come back. Stan wondered if you’d be interested.”

Her first thought? No way. She hadn’t come home to
stay
home—she’d just come back to figure out her next move. She had no intention of settling here.

But she bit her tongue, flattered that they would seek her out. And she did need a job.

And she could see the stars here a lot better than in
Columbus
.

Well,
sometimes.
At least when she had the Brody property at her disposal.

Oh hell, she clearly couldn’t think straight about a job right now. So she said the only sensible thing. “I’ll…keep it in mind, Dad. I, uh, don’t know if I want to make a decision this fast.”

“Well, fall’s
right around the corner—but you take
your time. I know all this change hasn’t been easy on you.”

Yeah, she’d thought the divorce and quitting her job and leaving her house had been hard—she’d had no idea what other bizarre ways her life would change by coming home. A vision of her and Mick, beneath the stars, moving together like animals, filled her head. Then came another much
worse
vision, one that seemed to be haunting
her the
past couple of days—Wayne Brody in that bed. She closed her eyes to shut it out.

“What’s wrong, honey? You okay?”

Damn it
,
snap out of it already. Get hold of yourself.
“I think it’s just the heat getting to me—giving me a headache is all. Nothing to worry about.”

Her father reached out to touch her hand. “You sure? You’d tell me if it was something worse than that?”

Oh God, he was concerned about her health. Because she was
lying
, making stuff up to protect herself.
And
her lover.
Oh Lord
,
she had a lover
.
A law-breaking one.
She couldn’t quite stop being shocked over it, no matter how much she thought about it.

She took a deep breath, reminded herself to be cool. “I’m fine, Dad, I promise. It’s just…the stress of it all getting to me, I guess.”

“Well, you’re home now,” he said, patting her hand across the table. “Safe at home where nothing can hurt you anymore.”

Oh Dad
,
if you only knew.

Later that night, Jenny stood in the living room, staring at the shrine to her mother. And even as guilt ate at her, she walked slowly to the wall, closed her hands around the edges of the large frame, and carefully lifted the picture from the screws it hung upon. Carrying it to the steps, she maneuvered it upstairs and into the spare bedroom which had once been hers—she’d been sleeping in her parents’ old room since coming home because it looked the least like it had when she was a girl.

Walking back down the steps, she couldn’t deny that the wall looked positively empty—a big, blank space staring at her, a tidy square of blue paint, darker than the rest of the room—but she wasn’t going to be deterred. If she wanted to take a picture down, she could. If she wanted to keep something from her father, she could. She was an adult and had a right to make her own decisions.

Even if they hurt someone?
she
asked inside as she carefully gathered the smaller pictures below in her arms, one by one. Taking the pictures down
was
going to hurt her dad whenever he noticed it. And the fact that she was keeping Mick’s secret would probably kill her father if he ever found out.

But she had to do these things, both of them. Because her heart and her gut told her they were right. And that was all she had to rely on right now. And getting tougher about it—not getting sad or distraught-looking every time she saw her dad—would be necessary. This was the first step toward feeling like the thirty-one-year-old woman she was, not the little girl who had once lived here.

After stowing the rest of the shrine upstairs in her old room, she went into her parents’ room—no,
her
new bedroom—and with much pushing and pulling and grunting, rearranged the furniture. She put the bed against a different wall, trading spots with the chest of drawers. Then she tossed a sheer, colored scarf over the lampshade. Tomorrow she would buy a new comforter for the bed, and maybe some new curtains, too. Even if she was only here for the summer, she needed to make this place her own. She had to. Or she would drown here.

She felt much stronger by the time she went back downstairs. The only way to deal with the things happening to her right now, she’d suddenly realized, was to take control. She’d taken control when Terrence had cheated on her. Yet, somehow, coming here had made her weak. But no more. She couldn’t
afford
to be weak. Not with her dad. And not with Mick, either. She’d had enough of being “good Jenny” lately.

Later, she sat on the couch with the radio on, looking through her coffee table book of photos from the Hubble telescope when a knock came on the back door. Mick. She knew it.

Setting the book down, she didn’t hesitate to go answer, pulling the door open wide.

And still the sight of him caught her off guard. Because he looked so sweaty good in a dark tee and blue jeans, a lock of hair dipping down onto his forehead. “Hey,” he said, but his eyes said more. Things like
I want you
. And
Can I trust you?

She bit her lip, mainly wrapped up in
the
I
want you
part. “Hey.”

“You forgot this again.” He held up the waterproof bag holding her telescope case.

“Not exactly forgot,” she pointed out, taking it from him and lowering it to the kitchen table. “More like figured you’d kill me if I went back up the hill for it.”

“Good,” he said gruffly, but then his tone—and expression—changed, softened. “So, pussycat, are we still cool? About what you know?”

“Yes,” she said, but she was going to be totally honest about it,
come
what may. “Although it’s hard for me not to tell my father. In fact, it’s sort of feeling like…the worst thing I’ve ever done.”

He tilted his head, his eyes looking unusually blue, and lowered his chin. “Maybe it’s the
best
thing you’ve ever done.”

“Yeah,” she answered quietly. “I’m a little confused on that point. But the reason I haven’t told him is because to do that would feel even
more
wrong than keeping the secret. So you can relax. I don’t have any intention of spilling the beans.”

She could almost see the relief move through his body.

And she couldn’t help asking, in her new, stronger mode, “Why do you seem so calm about this? Normally, you’d be yelling at me anyway, telling me I’d better not tell him. And last night you were all ‘
Don’t turn me in’
and everything.”

Standing in front of her, he simply sighed. “The truth? Maybe I’m just tired. Too tired to try to scare you. Or maybe I just figured out that if you really wanted to tell, there’s nothing I can do to stop you.”

There
were
things he could do to stop her, of course. She remembered her earlier words to Sue Ann:
It’s still not too late for a Brody to shoot me.
But apparently Mick wasn’t willing to go so far as bodily harm to keep her quiet—which made him a lot less scary. Maybe if Sue Ann could see Mick’s eyes, she’d understand that he wasn’t as bad as he sounded. Maybe she’d understand why Jenny couldn’t seem to tell him no—to anything.

“Tea?” he asked, using the back of his arm to mop the sweat off his forehead. “Damn, it’s hot.”

“Sorry, no tea—I’ve been too busy to make any. How about a Coke? I’ve got regular or Diet.”

“That’ll do fine. Regular.”

She pulled a can from the fridge and watched as he pressed it to his forehead, then his neck. He was the only man she’d ever known who she didn’t mind being a little sweaty.

“Do something special today?” he asked, glancing down her body. “You’re all dressed up.” She wore a yellow print cotton skirt and coordinating top.

“Actually, I had an HIV test. I’m clean, by the way.”

His eyes narrowed in confusion. “You got dressed up to take an HIV test?”

She couldn’t help laughing. “No, this is just what I wore. This is…how women in Destiny dress. We still think it’s the 1950s or something, I suppose.”