Something to Talk About (20 page)

When she finally made it to the car, she turned the heat on full blast and sat, staring at the guesthouse, watching the flicker of candles from the small arched window, and wondered what had set Jax off.

Reece. Where was Reece? Was she dead like Em had first assumed? Jax’s glance at that picture didn’t scream a lingering affection—for either of the people in the photo. So where was Maizy’s mother if she wasn’t dead?

Why did Jax look like he’d sooner cut off her head than keep a picture of her, and why would he keep a picture of Maizy’s mother from his daughter?

What had happened to his best friend Jake?

Why was whatever happened a sore subject?

Stop now, Em. Go home. Take a hot bath. Go to bed.

Or look them up on Google...

* * *

Jax threw the picture of him and Reece and Jake in the pile of glass and damned himself for overreacting to Em’s innocent question. The look on her face when he’d shut her down was like a kidney punch.

But how could he explain the sordid mess that was Reece and Jake? How could he explain the guilt Jake’s name drove through the core of him? How did he explain the kind of sorrow the subject of the two of them dredged up?

He pulled his shirt over his head and grabbed the bottle of wine, slugging some back before digging out a broom and sweeping the chunks of glass along with the picture into a pile.

He didn’t hide Reece from Maizy. He just didn’t talk about her a lot. That time would come, if Maizy kept being as intuitive as she was, but it wasn’t a conversation he was looking forward to.

A conversation he was forced to have because of Reece. Because she was an irresponsible, fucked-up mess. She’d interfered enough in his life; now she wasn’t even here and she was still pushing her way into a place he’d come to think of as sacred. The place where he felt more alive than he had in a very long time.

Here, in this shitty, crumbling guesthouse. With Em.

And now he’d hurt Em because of the meddling bitch.

Nope. You hurt Em all alone, pal. Reece didn’t have anything to do with this. You could have just told her all about Reece.

That was against the rules.

And very convenient.

Jax fingered the frame and tried for the millionth time to understand where it had all gone so wrong.

But he was tired of dissecting what happened. He was tired of living in the past. He was tired of keeping secrets. He was tired of worrying his world would explode at any second and there’d be no way for him to prevent it.

* * *

Em dropped the limp French fry on her tray, taking in the face of the man she once thought she’d spend the rest of her life with.

He was so little like the man she thought she knew. He was so little like Jax....

With trembling fingers, she forced her bad parting with Jax out of her mind and focused on this task. Finding out what Clifton wanted.

Clifton sat across from her at the restaurant they’d chosen as a drop-off/pickup point for the boys. The halfway point between the beginning of their separate lives. A greasy burger joint the boys loved and Em tolerated for the sake of amicability.

“I’m thinking of filing for full custody of the boys, Em.” He wiped his mouth with the paper napkin, crumpling it up and dropping it on the table much the way he’d discarded their marriage.

A prickly shot of anger whispered along her spine as his handsome face stared back at hers. How dare he sit there cool and collected like he’d just told her he was takin’ the boys fishin’? “You can barely manage regular visitation with them. How do you expect to have full-time custody, Clifton? It’s plenty more involved than just a meeting place and twenty dollars for some hamburgers and a milk shake.”

He’d changed so much in the year since their divorce. Gone were the days of red-checked flannel, Wrangler jeans and a John Deere cap. Now he wore boldly colored shirts with collars that tipped upward under his salon-styled hair and square glasses that enhanced his cheekbones and made his eyes a brighter blue.

Those eyes were hard as they looked at her from across the table. Icy and hard. “I’d see them more often if I didn’t live in Atlanta. It’s a long ride from there to Plum Orchard.”

She tightened her grip on her purse, trying to keep her voice low. “Is the ride ever too long when your children are involved? And it was your choice to move to Atlanta, Clifton. You could have stayed in the PO and been divorced just as easily.”

His mouth, the mouth that had lied so many lies, thinned. “Right. That would have worked out great.”

“You can’t wear women’s clothes in Plum Orchard? Only Atlanta allows that?”

He fisted his hand, clenched it, unclenched it. She knew that gesture. He was fighting the urge to yell. “I can’t live in Plum Orchard anymore, and you know why, Emmaline.”

“Because your girlfriend’s in Atlanta and she doesn’t like us hillbillies?”

“Leave her out of this. You know why. Because I’m a laughingstock there. What would that be like for the boys?”

“Don’t you mean what it
is
like for the boys?” Clifton loved them. She knew that. But while he’d gone off to try to understand what was happening to him, when he’d left on this journey to find acceptance with who he really was, he’d left everything up to her.

All the mess was hers to clean up. All the tears and nightmares were hers to soothe. And it wasn’t fair. He didn’t get to have everything he wanted when he’d made the mess.

His eyes grew softer, almost like the old Clifton. “I didn’t do this to hurt them. I never wanted to hurt them.”

“But it did, Clifton!” she whisper-yelled, leaning into the table. “If you’d spent less time sneakin’ off to find yourself, and more time thinking about what could happen to them if someone found out, none of this would have happened. No good comes from secrecy and lies. Yet, it isn’t you who’s paying the price. It’s the boys, and me. Me who has to stand by and watch them suffer because of what you did. It was selfish and cruel to think you could get away with it without any repercussions—especially comin’ from the small town we come from. Do you have any idea the things the children at school say to them about you? How they’re constantly teased?”

His spine went straight. “I won’t apologize for my lifestyle.”

“Don’t you wave that PC stick at me! Don’t you even consider accusing me of asking that of you. You don’t get to be a self-righteous jerk in the name of your lifestyle. You’re missing the whole point here. I’m not askin’ you to apologize for bein’ who you really are, Clifton. But could you have at least given us the chance to accept this side of you before you decided for us? Before you lied and cheated on not just me, but them? In the process of finding out you liked to wear women’s clothes, you were selfish. This is what happens when you think only of yourself. You get divorced and sacrifices have to be made. We’ve all made sacrifices lately. Why shouldn’t you?”

He looked down at his hands. “Clifton called me the other night.”

Em reached for a napkin to cool her flushed face. “Good. He should call his daddy.”

“No, you don’t understand. He called me and told me he wanted to come and live with me. He was crying, and there was nothing I could do about it.”

Em felt like she’d been slugged in the gut. Clifton was calling his father, reaching out when he was hurting and it wasn’t to her? “There was somethin’ you could have done about it. You could have gotten in your car and come to see him. But you won’t do that because you’re a coward. As yellow as they come. Doesn’t all this living honestly mean you face all the people you lied to when you left Plum Orchard? If you’ve made peace with who you are, who cares what everyone else thinks? It’s not like they’re waitin’ to burn you at the stake, Clifton. So folks in town will stare at you. Is being comfortable worth not answering Clifton’s call?”

But he ignored the part where he was at fault. “Clifton Junior is miserable. He hates school. He wants to come live with me.” There was almost a quiet resignation to his voice.

She didn’t know this man anymore. This man dressed like he’d shopped with his twenty-year-old girlfriend. This man with gel in his hair, and the residual stain of red polish still on his pinky finger.

Em couldn’t believe she was hearing this. “You’ll take those boys over my dead body, Clifton. I have primary custody, and that’s how it’ll stay. There’s no way they’re better off with you than they are with me.”

Clifton paused for a moment before he said, “Do you think a judge will say that when he finds out you work for a
phone-sex
company?”

Fear rippled up and down her spine, her tongue grew thick just like it used to when they were married. “I’m the general manager, Clifton, and I make good money. Money the boys need because their father conveniently forgets they need to eat! I don’t talk to the clients unless there’s an office problem, and you know it.”

“But you consort with those who do. How is that a good environment for the boys? Being around a bunch of women who talk to perfect strangers.”

Em popped up from the chair, the angry scrape of its legs screeching on the tile flooring. “And who do you do all your consortin’ with? Members of Mensa? I hate to remind you, Trixie LeMieux, but while I’m earnin’ a livin’, you’re moochin’ off your fancy girlfriend and entering beauty contests! This is ridiculous, you slingin’ arrows at me. You’ve taken enough from me, Clifton Amos. You won’t take my boys. My employment at Call Girls is honest work and it pays me well. If it weren’t for Dixie and Caine, your boys would have lost their home while you
found
yourself. I’m going to leave now, but if you aren’t right back here on Tuesday evenin’ at exactly six sharp with my sons, I’ll hunt you down with old man Coon’s shotgun myself. I’m not the old Emmaline With No Spine, Clifton. You’d do well to remember that!”

He was bluffing. There wasn’t a chance in the fiery depths of hell Clifton could take on the boys. He might have the power of his rich girlfriend’s money backing him, but Clifton was all hot air.

She prayed he was all hot air.

Seventeen

“M
iss Emmaline?”

Em nearly jumped out of her office chair. Guilty. Oh, God. She was so guilty. Two deep breaths later and she smiled up at Sanjeev.

“Am I disturbing you?”

Yes. I was just getting to the good part where I find out what happened to Jax’s best friend Jake Landry.
Good gravy. Was there no privacy when you were being a nosy biddy? She clicked the computer screen off and smiled at him. “Of course not, Sanjeev. How are you?”

Sanjeev bowed his head, his serene smile in place, his deeply bronzed skin glowing. “I am well. You?”

Em massaged the back of her neck. Sore. She was sore from sitting in the same spot for three hours hunting down information about Jax, and Jake, and the infamous Reece. She was mostly coming up with nothing more than aches and pains to show for it, but it wasn’t for lack of looking.

Jake and Jax had a software security development company they’d started right out of college along with Jax’s sister, Harper, who joined the company after Jake was killed in a car accident six years ago.

But there wasn’t much else to find. The company dissolved when Jax’s sister, Harper, was also killed in a mugging four years later. According to a couple of articles, their company had been very successful, but no mention of Reece.

Jax had suffered so much loss in such a small amount of time, her heart ached for him and little Maizy. Maybe his reaction to Reece’s picture played a part in that. Or maybe he was just angry she’d crossed the no-personal-information line? She hadn’t heard from him for two days, and it stung.

It more than stung. It hurt. It ached. She’d picked up her phone a hundred times to text him an apology, but thought better of it. She’d touched a nerve with the picture of Reece. Gone too far, or something.

She didn’t know how to approach this with him. “Hey, sorry I brought up a sore subject. Want to try that new vibrator I’ve been eyeing online?”

So what will it be like when it’s really over? Will it hurt less, Em?

“Emmaline?” Sanjeev peered over the top of her computer at her, his eyes full of concern. “Shall I make you a poultice for the cramps in your neck?”

Not a chance would she allow Sanjeev to heal her when she was doin’ the work of the devil by snooping on Jax. She shook her head then winced at the shooting pain on the left side of her neck. “No, Sanjeev. But thank you. What brings you here today? More of my undergarments lying about?”

His inky eyebrow rose, but his eyes laughed. “Not today. Though, I confess, I’m happy to see you’re moving forward and enjoying your...womanhood.”

Em’s head tipped back and she laughed. “I’m sorry I embarrassed you.”

“I’m not. I’m pleased to see you taking time for yourself. You are a selfless woman. Sometimes, in all that selflessness comes a draining of the spirit.”

“Do you really see me like that, Sanjeev? I’m not asking because I’m fishin’, mind you. I’m just not sure why everyone thinks that.” She was definitely being selfish right now.

“I do. Landon saw you that way, too. That’s why he left you in charge. You had to be selfless in order to handle his Dixie-Cup. She requires a great deal of selflessness—or she did.”

Em’s heart warmed. Whenever she felt alone, she thought of Landon, of his last days with her. Of the lessons he’d taught her about this thing called life.
“Live,”
he’d said.
“Live hard.”

He knew what she’d been going through with Clifton. He’d offered his help. Help she’d refused. She hadn’t wanted anything more from Landon than his friendship, and she’d gotten that in spades.

“I miss him so much. It’s funny, I didn’t know him very well till the end of his life. Us livin’ in the same town and all, we shoulda been better friends. But those last weeks with him are some of my most treasured memories.”

“I assure you, he reciprocated those feelings. And to answer your question, I miss him every single day.” He held out a hand to her and Em took it, giving it a squeeze.

“So what brings you to this neck of the woods, Sanjeev? You bringin’ Dixie lunch?”

He shook his head. “This came for you today.” He held out two manila envelopes with her name scrawled across them and the company’s address beneath.

She shrugged. “Must’ve gotten mixed up in the big house mail. Thanks, Sanjeev.” She dropped it on her desk and motioned to the chair for Sanjeev to sit.

“Oh, I mustn’t. There’s work to be done at the big house. Are we still on for our Dora the Explorer, Mona and Lisa playdate later this week? I promised those heathens of Dixie’s a meal fit for a queen.”

Em grinned. Dora loved Sanjeev and she loved playing with Dixie’s dogs Mona and Lisa in that enormous football field they called a backyard. “Absolutely. But promise me, no filet for Dora. She’s got a touchy tummy and the vet says we have to watch her weight.”

Sanjeev bowed again. “I promise, no filet. I cannot promise there won’t be gravy. Surely you can’t expect me to allow Mona and Lisa to dine on steak as Dora looks on with only her pitiful dry kibble? It’s unkind.”

Em laughed. “Fine. Gravy it is. Just a little.” For the umpteenth time in as many days, Em found herself counting her blessings. This motley crew of friends might not be what Plum Orchard or her mother titled respectable, but she didn’t care.

She was loved. Her boys were loved. Even Dora was loved. Nothing else mattered. Clifton could, in the immortal words of Landon, “suck it.”

These people gave more to her children than their own father did. She would not allow Clifton to sully it with his sudden bid for morality.

“Then I bid you good afternoon, and, Emmaline?”

“Uh-huh?”

“About your womanhood?”

Her cheeks went bright red.

Sanjeev’s eyes twinkled. “You go, girl!” He glided out of the door as softly as he’d entered, making her smile again.

With a sigh, she turned her attention to the flowery scrawl on the first envelope and slit it open. Probably more hate mail. Usually, it was easy to identify which member in town had sent it.

Jared Tompkins had a penchant for forgetting to cross his
T
’s just like in high school, and Charla Sue Lawson’s letters smelled like Chanel No. 5.

But this one didn’t smell like perfume, and the
T
’s were definitely crossed. Em’s eyes flew over the official piece of paper with the raised seal.

It was a birth certificate.

Hers.

Her heart began to crash in her ears while the rest of the world crumbled around her. This was a lie. It had to be a lie. Who would do something so awful?

Her fingers shook, her stomach sloshed with the weight of her lunch. She took several deep breaths and forced herself to read again the line designated for Name of Father.

Well, that was wrong. Of course it was wrong. Someone was playing a cruel joke on her.

Her father was Edward Mitchell. He’d left when she was just an infant then died three years later of lung cancer. He’d been an outsider from Texas. Not from Plum Orchard, and according to her mother, he’d never been happy living here.

He was an accountant. He liked numbers. He’d run off to Texas when he’d left Clora. She remembered very clearly the open-and-shut discussion she’d had with Clora about him. She had one picture of him—a picture of him with her mother on their wedding day. Neither of them looked wildly in love, but then, Clora wasn’t wild about anything.

It was the only picture Em had, old and faded; she’d clung to it when her mother had banished all talk of him.

But he was absolutely not Ethan
Davis,
husband to Pearl, father to her best friend in the whole world—Dixie Davis.

* * *

The phone rang and rang, just like it always did when he called the number on his phone that was supposed to be Reece’s. This time, he wasn’t hanging up. This time he was going to leave her a message and find out what the hell she wanted because he had other things he wanted to do, and Reece was standing in the way of it all.

He knew she was here—somewhere. He knew he’d seen her at the school and he knew she was trying to get a glimpse of Maizy.

What scared the shit out of him was why. Why did she want to see her after all this time? Was she hatching some crazy plan to snatch her? Was Reece really selfless enough to care that much about another human being?

His lips thinned when he got her voice mail. “Reece? It’s Jax. Let’s stop the bullshit. Meet me down by the bridge off Lambert
tomorrow
. Five o’clock. If you don’t show up, I’m calling the cops.”

Clicking the phone off, he dropped it on the kitchen table like it was hot.

Time to face your demons, Jackson Hawthorne.

Face them so you can move on to something better. Something in the here and now. Something like Em.

He’d behaved like an ass with her. A total ass, and he didn’t know how to fix it. He’d wanted to stop in her office a hundred times today—smell her perfume, see her smile—apologize for being such a dick, but she’d left work early, and he had things to handle first. He wanted to go to her with a clear head. Reece was muddying those waters right now.

Em played a huge part in his calling Reece. If he could figure out what she wanted, then he’d know what to do next. But if he didn’t clear it all up, see her one last time and let it go for good, he couldn’t move forward with Em.

To
Em.

He wanted to move forward. The hell with her protests and her nothing-personal mantra. She wanted him, too. He felt it in his gut—now he just had to convince her to get on board.

A chair scraped, startling him.

“Why you here in the dark, big brother?”

Jax spun the phone around, not looking at Tag. “Just thinking.”

“About?”

He sighed. “Look, I don’t want to fight with you tonight, Tag. I’m tired and it’s been a shitty couple of days.”

“So you’re thinking about Reece?”

He remained silent, trying to gauge his brother’s mood by watching his face in the light from above the stove. “Yep.”

“I’ve been really hard on you about her.”

“No harder than I’ve been on myself.”

“She doesn’t deserve Maizy.”

“And it’ll be over my dead body before she gets her. But I can’t just keep ignoring her existence, Tag. If I’m going to move forward, I have to find out what she wants. I’d like your support in that.”

“She pisses me off.”

“Yeah. I got that.”

“But I’ve been a real asshole about it.”

“You won’t hear me protest.”

“I’m trying to work that all out. I just get so pissed off. I keep hearing it’s because of my guilt about Harper.”

Guilt and regrets. They had plenty of that going around these days.

Tag based every reaction he had for every situation on his pain over Harper’s death. But it had to stop. “Listen, don’t think I don’t get a thing or two about how you’re feeling, Tag. Remember Jake?”

Tag shook his head. “Totally different.”

“Maybe the reasons for our regrets are different, but it’s the same damn guilt. Harper knew you loved her. But I can’t say that to you anymore, Tag. I’ve only said it a hundred times. Harper knew what you were going through before she died. She understood. She really did, better than all of us, and her death was tragic and it hurt us all like hell, but I can’t keep going over the same shit with you. I also can’t let you take it out on all of us, either. I just can’t stay stuck here in the past with you anymore.”

“So seeing Reece is your way of finding the closure everyone says is so healthy?”

“It’s gotta beat yelling and fighting with everyone all the time. Guilt can eat you alive. I’m done being guilt’s midnight snack. I wish you were, too.”

“What brought this on?”

“A chance at some real happiness and the need for a clean slate.”

“Em?”

He smiled. In the midst of all the misery they’d endured as a family, in the height of Tag’s agonizing trek back from the darkest point in his life, Em still made him smile. Feel. Want. Look forward. “I think so.”

Tag smiled back. It wasn’t the smug upward turn of his lips that had become his standard—it was real, and it was warm. Like the old Tag. “Good on you, man. You need me to come with you when you meet Reece? Somebody to be there for you when you open up all those old wounds?”

He smiled again. The best thing about choosing to move forward was the freedom from all those old wounds. They didn’t feel like wounds as much anymore. They felt like a scar from a lesson learned. “Nah. I’m good. Just keep a close eye on Maizy, okay?”

“Always.” He pushed his chair back and slapped Jax on the back before heading out of the kitchen.

“Oh, and hey, Tag?”

He paused in the doorway, his clothes covered in Sheetrock dust, his knit cap planted on his head, his face open and relaxed. “Yep?”

“Thanks for having my back.”

Tag’s Adam’s apple worked when he swallowed hard. “Always, brother. Always.”

* * *

“Maizy said she don’t got a mommy.”

“Doesn’t have,” Em corrected Gareth, planting a kiss on the top of his head and flipping to the next page in their book. Maizy brought to mind Jax, and Jax brought to mind the empty ache she hoped to ignore. “When did she say that, honey?”

“When we was talkin’ about mommies at lunch. She said she has no mommy. She had an aunt Harper, but she died. All she has is her dad and her uncles and her grandparents.”

So Jax didn’t acknowledge the woman who’d given birth to Maizy? It was almost as if Maizy were hatched. Like she’d cropped up out of the ground after a seed was planted. No wonder he’d been so angry about her picture.

Why? And how did Maizy feel about that? She was at the age when asking questions was second only to breathing. And what had happened to her mother? Maybe she’d left them? That made Em’s chest hurt. Never. Not as long as she had life in her would she leave the boys. Or let Clifton take them.

After getting caught looking Jax up on Google, she’d closed the computer and refused to pry further. He was keeping Reece close to his chest for a reason—one he didn’t want her to know because it was personal and they had Nothing Personal stamped on their relationship.