Authors: Lauren Gilley
But his eyes cut straight through the morning and latched onto hers. He didn’t smile, he gave nothing away, but his eyes said
hi
.
Hi, gorgeous
, she said back, and on some level, she lamented the loss of her cold indignation. She was a great big ball of sap: erratic pulse, weak knees, sexual daydreams and all. But she could live with that.
By the time the day officially began, two other track teams had arrived and the stands had added another handful of cheerers-on. Ellie sipped her coffee and watched the hurdlers kick off the proceedings, not expecting to interact with anyone around her and not minding it.
It startled her to hear a female, “Oh, hey,” as a pair of brown suede moccasins dropped down from the tier above her.
Ellie pushed her shades up on her forehead and took quick stock of the girl who sat down beside her. In boot cut, second-skin jeans and a white, clinging long-sleeve tee, she made very casual look good: aviator shades perched on her little slip of a nose, her hair a wild, loose mane of honey and mahogany waves. Jordan’s younger sister Jo was pretty in a natural, unassuming way.
“Ellie, right?” she asked, and Ellie figured she knew, but was using it as a way to test the waters. Last night hadn’t exactly been a shining spark of instant friendship.
“Yeah.” Ellie took a deep breath and tunneled through her sudden anxiety to the feel of Jordan stroking her hair back. The soft way he’d touched her face the night before. She pulled on a brave face and injected some enthusiasm into her voice. “How are you?”
“Wonderfully un-morning sick,” Jo said, and pushed her own shades up into her hair. Her eyes were the exact brilliant shade of turquoise as Jordan’s, full of gold flecks in the late morning sun. “Is that a word?” Her mouth twitched to the side. “I dunno. But anyway, yeah. You?”
“I’m - ” Ellie started to offer a pleasantry, but sighed instead. “Actually, I wanted to apologize for being a total mannequin last night.” If she was going to say sorry, she might as well get it over with straight off the bat.
Jo’s gaze cut over, narrow and shrewd, a half smile curling one corner of her mouth. “Mannequin? Oh, please. Jordie brought you in front of the whole firing squad at once. All we were missing was my mother with an apple pie and a box of condoms. I give you props for not having a full-on breakdown.”
A quick, nervous laugh escaped her. “That wasn’t an impossibility, believe me.”
“Speak of the devil.” Jo glanced toward the head of the track and lifted a wave. “There he is, shaking in his little breakaway pants, wondering what I’m up here saying to you.”
“Shaking” wasn’t how Ellie would have described Jordan as he tossed his sister a two-fingered wave and turned back to the other coach who was speaking to him.
“Are you the torturing kind of sister?” Ellie asked and hoped it came out sounding more light than truly curious. She could only hope that Jo was hard to insult and cynical like Jordan; that was something she could operate around.
“Only when he needs it,” Jo said, her tone congenial. She smiled in an absent sort of way, like she was seeing things splashed across the back of her mind. “We’re the youngest, so we’re close. He doles out his share of life advice, so I figure I ought to return the favor now and then.”
Ellie didn’t know what to say to that; she had no experience in this whole siblings supporting one another business.
Jo turned toward her, smile even fainter. “But no, I’m not gonna put you through the ringer, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Ellie felt a blush threaten. “Oh, I wasn’t worried, I was just…”
“Hoping I’m not a giant bitch.”
She blinked and bit down on her lip, not sure how to confirm or deny that in a polite way. “Jordan pretends he doesn’t get bothered by things,” she said
very
carefully, thinking of the wild, desperate light in his eyes the night before. “But he’s really sweet and I could see his family being protective of him. I wasn’t sure what to expect, was all.”
A straight, white smile that looked a lot like her brother’s split Jo’s face nearly in two. “Good answer,” she said and glanced out toward the track again. “Very good answer.”
Kyle had one much younger brother and between little Brian and Kyle’s parents, the reception had never been a warm one for her. She’d never said anything “very good” in their estimation. And her own parents were her biggest critics aside from the self-assessments she performed on herself.
A cool, tingling wave of relief rippled through her as she watched a hundred meter hurdle race begin with a
pop
of the starter’s pistol.
“You like him a lot, don’t you?” Jo asked a moment later.
Ellie pulled one foot up on the bleachers and propped her chin on her denim-covered knee, sighing dreamily. “A whole, whole lot.”
**
Jordan went home that night with the pride in his runners overshadowed by a half a dozen lurking disappointments.
Jaded fucking letch
, he reminded himself as he walked to the back door and tried to find some scrap of excitement.
Anton had won his race; Lane and Jonathan had come in third and fifth respectively. Vaughn had slung arms around all of them for a photo op for the parents and some peroxide blonde school paper rat. And Jordan had watched it all as if from an observation deck somewhere, waiting for some kind of satisfaction that wouldn’t come. He’d cheered his boys and timed their runs, had made nice chit-chat with the other coaches, and all the while he’d felt a big empty hole where his sense of accomplishment should have been, beating with the phantom pulse of a physical wound.
Forget Ellie,
he
was fucked up.
Ellie:
I’m off for work
, her text had said as the sun had started its plummet toward the earth.
Do you want to come by later?
Meet you at work,
he’d sent back, because he didn’t like the idea of her walking to her car in the dark of Angelo’s parking lot. Because he was that guy all of a sudden: the one who walked his girlfriend everywhere she needed to go.
Girlfriend. Yeah. He was in it.
It was Friday, so the kitchen was cold – when Mom was cooking, it was this hot, steaming, boiling vat of activity – the lights were off save the tube over the stove and two pizza boxes were stacked on the table. Jo’s car wasn’t in the drive which meant Delta’s invite to the Waleses for dinner had been accepted. The TV was a deep rumble toward the front of the house and for the moment, he was glad of the uncharacteristic quiet. He was going to shower the track off him, throw some things in a bag and maybe catch a nap until it was time to leave.
He made it all the way through the living room – not risking a glance at his parents for fear of discovery – and had his sneaker on the bottom stair when he was busted. "Jordie!" Beth's voice snatched him by the back of the shirt, right between the shoulder blades like her hand used to when he was a little boy, and in that instant he was two people. He was the Jordan who would hear Ellie Grayson's murmur of approval right against his ear when he was all the way inside her that night. And he was the Jordie whose mother was bearing down on him from the sofa with a frown on her face that demanded an explanation. He braced a hand on the bannister and waited.
Beth’s expression was harried, but she asked, “How was the meet?” with a painful attempt at a relaxed smile.
Jordan thought his mother always looked ten years older when she was stressed – like now: her crow’s feet deep lines pressed into the corners of her eyes, gravity pulling at the rest of her face, the last tender strains of daylight striking each and every gray hair her colorist had missed at the salon. “My guys did well,” he said with the futile hope that she’d leave it at that.
“I wanted to come, but I couldn’t get away from work. Jo said she stopped by on her lunch break.”
“Yeah, she - ”
“She also said your girlfriend was there.”
He hated this: the wounded way his mom said
girlfriend
, her green eyes crinkling up like he’d caused her true harm.
“Yeah,” he sighed. “She was there too.”
“Well,
Jordie
!” She flung up a hand, bracelets rattling. “You didn’t tell us you had an actual
girlfriend
.”
Neither of his sisters took after Mom, and he was grateful for that. They had ribbed him, would continue to, but from them, it was a teasing sort of sweetness. From Mom, it was all indignation and coddling. “I didn’t know what she was at first,” he said patiently. “I didn’t want to get your hopes up.” Because Beth was the sort of person who thought every girl he’d ever dated could be “the one” and was obsessed with approving them before he went ring shopping. He hadn’t brought a girl home to meet her since high school, and she was starting to get restless.
“But she
is
your girlfriend?”
“Yes.” And for some reason that felt really good to say.
Beth’s eyes narrowed even further, just slits made dark by her compressed lashes. “Is she a nice girl? Or one of your…
acquaintances
?”
“She’s very nice.”
“You’ve been spending a lot of nights out.”
“I like her.”
“It’s just that you’re never home anymore - ”
“Ah, leave him alone,” Randy interjected without moving his eyes away from the TV screen. “He’s a grown-ass man. He doesn’t want to spend every night at home with his mommy.”
Thanks, Dad
.
“Well, I’m just curious is all,” Beth defended. “I wanna know what kind of girl has him so wrapped up.”
“Mom - ”
“You’re being careful, aren’t you? What’s going on with your sister should be proof positive you can’t be too careful when it comes to - ”
“
Mom
.”
She huffed an exaggerated breath. “I worry about you, you know.”
“I know, but you don’t have to.”
The heavy downward twist of her lips suggested he was stupid for even saying such a thing; she was his mother, and worry came standard. “I want to meet her,” she said, lifting her head in challenge. Daring him to tell her no because he always said no.
Surprising her, and himself, he said, “Yeah. Sure.” And slipped up the stairs while she was still reeling in shock.
24
“
I
promise things aren’t always this crazy around here,” Jo said as she chased a blue crayon across the coffee table. Her arms weren’t long enough and it rolled right off the edge. She tucked her hair behind her ears and glanced up over the back of the couch in apology. Tam’s friend from school, James (she’d nearly done a cartwheel to hear that Tam was doing so well at school he’d made an actual friend) had come to the house so the two of them could build spreadsheets together for class, thinking Casa de Walker would be quieter since James had two kids and a wife at home.
Ha
.
Jo had Chase and Logan for the evening, because even if Walt didn’t want to claim her as a sister any longer, she was still good enough to babysit his children. And Beth was starting dinner, which meant the kitchen was full of onion smell and mother-in-law chatter while the guys had worked. Jo felt embarrassed for Tam, but her hubby had seemed unconcerned about his coolness. That was one of those things she sometimes took for granted about him, but shouldn’t have; such a starved puppy all his life, he loved her parents, loved that they were one of those obnoxious, in-your-face families, and was never apologetic for them.
“It’s fine,” James assured. “I’ve got kids, I know how it is.”
He couldn’t have been more dissimilar – at least outwardly – from Tam. Broad and crew cut, made of muscle stacked on muscle, serious and looking every inch the cop Tam had said he was, he could have been the arresting officer come to haul away her skateboarder.
“We’re gonna go up to the boys’ old room,” Tam said, and she nodded.
“Good idea.”
“Aunt Jo!” And she was ensnared by Logan’s plaintive wail over the crayons.
Gwen was taking culinary classes at the Y on Monday nights, and the teenage girl who lived down the street from them and normally watched the boys was sick with a stomach flu. So it had been Aunt Jo to the rescue again, as usual. Gwen had looked lovely – a cream cardigan that looked new over pressed khakis and a black shell, her soft brown hair piled up on her head with a clip – and her face had been creased with the kind of gratitude that couldn’t be faked. “I swear, I wouldn’t have asked if I’d had another choice,” she’d said out in the drive as the boys had come tumbling out of her Yukon like Lab puppies. “I just hate to be a bother, Jo.”
“It’s no bother,” Jo had assured with a smile she hadn’t quite felt. She liked Gwen. Once, before Ireland and the revelations the castle had generated, she might have even said she loved Gwen. After all, she, just like the boys, couldn’t be held responsible for the cold cunning of her husband. But something about knowing what Walt had done to her, and thinking that Gwen loved him the way she did…it had put up a wall. It was made of old eighties style glass block, translucent and unobtrusive. But it was a wall all the same, and when Jo hugged her sister-in-law, it wasn’t the way she hugged Delta. When she smiled, it wasn’t the smile she’d given young little Ellie who was head over heels for Jordan. And the worst part was, Jo had no inkling how the situation could be fixed. If she was still railing, curse-hurling furious with Walt, they might could have talked through their differences. But in the past year, the argument had hardened into something chunky and immovable that sat between them; dust had settled on it, and the cool air that radiated off it wasn’t anything she knew how to warm.
Walter had hurt Tam. On purpose. And Jo just didn’t think she could forgive anyone who’d done that.
Chase and Logan knew, too. They were restless as hunting dogs and elbow deep in crayons, but one of them would give her a sideways glance every so often, looking like miniatures of their father with their mother’s hair, and she could read the curiosity leaping off them in waves. Why did Aunt Jo and Daddy never occupy the same room anymore?
“Jo?” Beth came to the door, whisking something in a small saucepan that had curls of steam licking up from it. “I think Gwen’s here. Her car just pulled up.”
Relief was a quick, hard surge through her as she got to her feet. “Alright, boys. Jackets.”
It was dark out, just after eight, the night already getting good and inky beyond the windows. Walt didn’t like Gwen out driving after nightfall, he’d said to Mike, but she was more “manageable” when he let her do things like t
his when “the fancy struck her.” Jo had bristled at the word choice. High school sweethearts, they’d married while Walt was still in college, but Gwen had dropped out halfway through, wanting to build a home for him, wanting to be the good little missus with dinner on the table and slippers in hand. Gwen going to culinary classes wasn’t an opportunity of which her husband was supportive – it was something he
allowed
her to do. So his little world never got shaken up.
Jo bundled the boys in their windbreakers and pulled Tam’s worn, favorite leather jacket off the peg by the back door, the familiar weight and old cigarette smoke smell of it wrapping her up like a hug. It was too big on her, but that was the point.
“Bye, boys, gimme a kiss,” Beth said from the stove and goodbyes were passed around.
Outside, the wind was picking up, the crispy leaves clicking over one another as the tree limbs tossed one into the next like dominos. Chase and Logan surged ahead of her around the side of the house, turning into black silhouettes in their mother’s headlights.
The Yukon Denali was that obnoxious off-white color everyone thought looked expensive but Jo hated: it just looked like white gone dirty. Gwen’s car. Walt drove a Benz. But when the driver door opened and a big, tall shadow poured itself out into the night, it became very apparent that Gwen wasn’t driving it tonight.
Shit
.
Walt intercepted his boys and snatched them both into a big bear hug, crouching down until the tail of his wool coat brushed the driveway. There was a rush of babbled little boy voices that got snatched up in
the wind, to which Walt said, “Sure. You guys get in and we’ll stop on the way home.” Chase and Logan leaped over one another and tripped their way into the backseat. The door shut with an expensive
clap
and then it was just the two of them.
Jo knew, as she pulled the halves of Tam’s jacket together over her breasts and held them there with folded arms, that no good could come from linge
ring a moment longer. She was messy and tired and wearing her husband’s coat, looking just like the “little idiot” Walt had called her the last time they’d spoken.
But he was rooted in front of the car, hands going into his pockets, and that could only mean he had something he wanted to say.
“Gwen says you’re expecting,” cut through the wind and the cool dark air between them like a razor.
“I’ll take that as congratulations.”
“Don’t.” He hitched his big shoulders up against a strong gust and shook his head. His face was lit from below, a mask of upside down shadows, but the disgust was still plain. “Do you have a fucking clue what you’re doing?” he asked like he was inquiring about the weather.
He didn’t mean diapers and bottles, she knew. Hearing him question
the child Tam had given her was expected, and it wouldn’t have stung if Tam hadn’t already questioned it himself.
“I think so. I think I’m watching your kids for you and
you’re thanking me like this.”
He twitched a humorless grin. “Don’t say I never warned you. Now he’s got you hooked for life. You can divorce
him, you can go halfway across the world, but he’ll always be that kid’s father, and you won’t be able to shake him.”
Her retort formed and died in her throat as
he backed away and climbed into the Yukon. Tears started pooling behind her eyes and she clamped her lips together like that might somehow hold them at bay.
The thing she hated most was that she still cared enough about the asshole that he could hurt her.
**
Jo was sitting in her dad’s chair, all snuggled back in the corner of it, her legs curled under her, wearing black leggings and an old sweatshirt that was unraveling at the cuffs. The sun was coming in through the windows at a low angle, lighting off all the golden strands in her wavy, voluminous hair. She was reading aloud from a book that was open in her lap, her arm around a little girl with a whole mess of shiny black hair.
Tam didn’t know how he’d come into the room – didn’t remember walking or coming down the stairs – but he must have made a sound because Jo stopped reading and glanced up, her smile instant and genuine. “Hi, Daddy.” Hearing that word come out of her mouth startled the hell out of him.
And then the little girl lifted her head.
Her face was Jo’s: the little nose and the high cheeks, all the makings of a perfect pixie still round with childhood and soft with innocence, her skin alabaster. Her eyes were big, ringed in dark lashes, and the sort of electric blue never mistaken for any other color. Glossy hanks of hair that had escaped from her ponytail fell to her shoulders. Her shirt was blue, little pink hearts embroidered around the collar. And even if she had Jo’s face, the smile that stole across it…that was his. Like her hair, and her eyes, the smile was all his.
“
Daddy
!” she shrieked and was up off the chair like lightning, bounding across the carpet until she was close enough to fling herself at him.
Tam had no instincts in this area, but suddenly he was dropped down and ready to catch her, arms going around her and hoisting her back up. Her little legs went around his hip and her arms circled his neck like it was the most natural thing in the world, like she’d done it a thousand times. And she had, he realized, when he felt the little flutter of her baby heart against his shoulder and cupped the back of her head in his hand, her hair feeling just like his own on his skin.
His daughter.
People said “my son” and “my daughter” in the same detached way they might say “my lawnmower.” As his eyes found Jo’s, and all the things she was telling him with them, he was overcome by this great, sweeping rip tide of emotion that brought with it the knowledge that “daughter” just didn’t cut it.
Their little girl.
Bam!
The dream dissipated in a flash bang of white light across the backs of his eyes and Tam went jackknifing upright in bed, breathing like he’d just run a marathon. The room was dark, moonlight through the gap in the drapes a bright stripe across the covers, the furniture indistinguishable masses along the walls. When he blinked, the image of her little face was still a white tattoo against his brain.
Jo stirred beside him, a rustle of sheets and a wordless murmur.
His mind was doing great big somersaults.
He’d seen her – the baby.
Their baby.
A her.
A little girl who looked just like the both of them.
His chest squeezed up tight in a way that had nothing to do with how hard his heart was knocking against his ribs. The night Jo had told him outside the restaurant, he hadn’t known. Not when she’d delivered her ultimatum on the patio nor when she’d slid her arms around his neck from behind and asked him to please just not be mad at her about the baby. Suddenly, though – as if the insight had been hurled down into his head from heaven – he
knew
.
“Joey.” His hand found her hip and she propped up on an elbow.
“What?” Her voice was thick with sleep.
Guilt needled at him for waking her, but it wasn’t as strong as the guilt he felt for all the rest.
“Joey,” he repeated, and she rolled onto her back, blinking up at him, the whites of her eyes bright with the moon. Even in the almost dark, he could swear he saw the concern that skated across her features.
“What’s wrong?”
“I had a dream,” he said, feeling like an idiot for saying it. But he was full of this uncontrollable excitement that was nothing like anything he’d ever experienced before.
“Like a sleeping dream? Or an MLK dream?”
“A sleeping dream. Like…like…”
She’d been sleeping in nothing but panties and one of his old t-shirts lately. He put his hand on the soft hollow between her breasts and moved down, over the ridge of her sternum all the way to the slightest outward curve of her belly down low where the baby was, and spanned his fingers across the old cotton beneath her navel.