“We’re heading out,” Jackson said, walking into the kitchen.
Michelle turned from the sink. “I should go with you.”
“No, you shouldn’t. It’s a seven-hour ride going and coming. You told me what you need me to pick up. I’m going to do it and that’s it. I don’t want you going back there.” He walked up to her. “Look at me. It’s best this way.”
She blinked back impending tears. “You’re right. I know that.” She lowered her head.
“I’ll be back late tonight. Me and Levi are going to take turns driving. So don’t worry.”
“Okay,” she managed. “Just be careful.”
“You know he likes you, don’t you.”
Her face heated. “Did he say that?”
“He didn’t have to, he asks about you enough. Maybe when all of this mess is over…” He lightly shrugged his shoulder.
“We’ll see.”
He kissed her cheek. “Later.” He turned to leave.
“I like him, too,” she called out.
“Yeah, I know,” he tossed over his shoulder.
Michelle leaned against the sink and folded her arms. He liked her. It was a start.
Jackson pulled up in front of Levi’s house and blew the horn. Levi had purchased the house in a foreclosure two years earlier. It needed extensive work when he bought it, but over time he’d turned it into a show piece. He’d gutted the whole house and room by room restored it, replacing the hardwood floors, the crown molding and fireplaces. He’d put in new windows and doors, a new bathroom and upgraded the kitchen. But he’d managed to keep the old charm about the house with some modern upgrades. Levi was definitely a renaissance man. He was smart and handy. If Levi did wind up with his sister, he wouldn’t lose sleep over it.
“Hey, man,” Levi greeted, hopping into the passenger seat. He handed Jackson a travel mug of hot coffee. “For the road.”
“Thanks.” He placed the mug in the cup holder and put the car in gear. “I figure we try to drive straight through. Get what we need to get and come right on back.”
“Fine with me. Just let me know when you want me to drive.”
Jackson turned on the radio.
“So what kind of guy is this Travis?”
“If you would have asked me that six months ago I would have told you he was a great guy, hard worker, good husband and father.” He jaw clenched. “That was six months ago.”
“I don’t understand guys like that. If you’re unhappy then get the hell out.”
“Yeah,” Jackson grumbled.
“And with your ex?” He shook his head in amazement. “Takes all kinds of people.”
They were quiet for a while. “Hey, listen, man, you think if I asked Michelle to go out with me, she would? Or you think it’s too soon? Hey, maybe it’s not even cool with you about me asking about your sister.” He reached for his mug of coffee and took a long swallow.
Jackson looked at him out of the corner of his eye. “It’s cool with me and I think she might say yes.”
Levi grinned like he’d won money. “Awright. That’s a good thing.” He bobbed his shaved head in time to his words.
“Just remember, she’s my sister so I don’t want to hear anything I shouldn’t be hearing. You feel me?”
“Yeah, yeah, man. I hear ya.” He settled back to enjoy the ride.
Zoe’s head was pounding. She’d awakened with a headache and couldn’t seem to shake it off. It had been a while since she’d had such a whopper. They generally came after she’d had one of those dreams about running. And she’d wake up the next morning with a feeling of dread and a blinding headache.
All of her senses today were surrounding Jackson. She couldn’t put her finger on what it was. But she felt unsettled every time she thought of him. It was the first night since they’d been intimate with each other that they had not spent the night together. Perhaps that was it; simple separation anxiety.
She’d always pooh-poohed Nana when she told her that her heightened senses were a gift if she learned to use them. Zoe didn’t want to hear it. She wanted to experience life in the same order as everyone else. She didn’t want to know anything that she wasn’t supposed to know. But today was different. She couldn’t shake the tightness in her belly or the sensation that something was wrong. Heightened senses or not, she knew in her soul that it had to do with Jackson.
She tried to relax her mind and open it the way Nana always told her, become one with her surroundings. All she got for her troubles was the same pounding in her head. Maybe she should have listened all those years ago.
She picked up her coffee cup from the kitchen table and walked to the back window. The sky was gray, almost dingy. She could see the storm clouds brewing in the distance. Dropping the curtain back in place she wished that they’d chosen another day to drive to New Orleans.
Levi pulled out of the rest stop having switched places with Jackson for the balance of the ride.
“Making pretty good time,” Jackson said, buckling up.
“I figure another two hours tops. Sky looks pretty ugly, though.”
“Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Hope we’re not fighting the weather on the way back.”
“So everything cool with the job? No more notes?”
“No. So far everything is quiet. And I want to keep it that way.”
“I hear ya. Nothing worse than having those kinds of accusations thrown at you. Hard as hell to fight.”
“Yeah, exactly. I still can’t figure who would do something like that. For what purpose?”
“Obviously to mess with you, bro.” He merged onto the exit ramp. “I gotta tell you though, I still think Victoria has something to do with it.”
“Man, I thought the same thing, but it doesn’t make sense to go through all that trouble and then leave.”
“Hey, maybe it was her last hurrah. Who knows, man, women can have all kinds of reasons for doing stuff that men will never understand.”
Jackson snorted a laugh and leaned back.
Two hours later they pulled into the parish of St. Tammany, one of the most affluent parishes in New Orleans and the fastest growing. The stately homes were graced with towering willow trees and lush green, well-manicured lawns. There was a quiet elegance to the community.
“So this is where your sister lived,” Levi commented, eyeing the homes.
“Yeah, ten years. A far cry from where we grew up.”
“Where’d you grow up?”
“Ninth Ward. Great people, tight knit, but not well off. Most folks struggled the majority of their lives to make ends meet. Not always first in line for services from the government, either. But we survived. We were happy, though.”
“How’d Michelle meet Travis?”
“Make your next right. It’s on the next street.” He paused a moment. “I introduced them,” he said through tight lips. He shook his head in regret. “Biggest mistake I ever made, next to getting involved with Carla.”
“Hey, you couldn’t have known.”
He turned and looked hard at his friend. “I don’t intend to make that mistake again.”
“Understood.”
“Right there.” Jackson pointed to a two-story brick house.
“Nice,” Levi murmured, pulling into the long driveway. “Doesn’t look like anyone’s home.” He cut the engine.
They got out and approached the front door. Jackson rang the bell as a courtesy before putting his sister’s key in the lock.
The house was dark and quiet and smelled like a liquor still. Jackson flicked the light switch on the wall and the chaos was bathed in soft white light.
Empty bottles, take-out cartons, newspapers and dirty clothes were on every surface.
“What the hell happened in here?” Levi asked, stepping over a pile of papers.
“Maybe he had an attack of conscience. Come on,” he said. “I want to get Michelle and Shay’s things and get out of here.” He led the way to the upstairs bedrooms, walked down the hall to the room that Michelle shared with Travis and opened the door. At first he didn’t see him and then his gaze settled on the figure sitting still as stone in a chair by the window.
Jackson turned on the light and nothing happened.
“Light out?” Levi asked, not knowing what was going on.
“Looks like Travis is home after all.” He stepped fully into the room that was in total disarray. He crossed the room and stood over the inert form of his brother-in-law. He roughly shook his shoulder.
Travis groaned, struggled to open his eyes and when he was finally able to focus he lurched back in the easy chair.
“What the hell are you doing in my house?” He wobbled to his feet, weaved for a moment before finding his footing.
“Save it, Travis. I came to get my sister’s and my niece’s things.”
“Where’s my wife and my daughter?”
“Your wife and your daughter! What the fuck do you care?” Jackson bellowed. “After what you did to her, to Shay…” He stepped closer and caught the stench of his unwashed body and days of drinking. For a hot minute he wondered what had happened to Travis, why he was living like this. But the moment quickly passed. He shoved him back down into the chair. “Stay out of my way until I’m done.”
He whirled away and went to the closet, nearly ripping the door from its hinges and began taking what was left of Michelle’s clothes out the closet. Michelle told him that all of her papers were in a metal lockbox in the back of the closet. He looked behind the shoe rack and found the box.
Jackson handed off the clothes to Levi who placed them in a big duffel bag that they’d brought along. He kept his eye on Travis while Jackson went through the dresser drawers taking whatever he thought Michelle might need. Jackson slammed the drawers shut rattling the mirror on top.
“Come on,” he growled.
Jackson stormed out and went down the hall to Shay’s room. He turned on the light and was stunned to see that it was pristine. All of Shay’s toys and stuffed animals were neatly placed on shelves. Her bed was made and covered with a Dora the Explorer quilt. In the center of the room was a round pink table and two pink chairs.
Seeing it all, being in this house, the full impact of the life that his sister had led and was now destroyed by that no good bastard wallowing in the other room roared through him and exploded in his head.
“Damn it! I want to kill him.” He paced the room, his blood pumping.
“Take it easy man.” Levi grabbed Jackson’s arm. “I know this is rough. Let’s do what we came to do and get out of here.”
Jackson’s nostrils flared. He stomped over to the closet and started taking out Shay’s clothes. They gathered as much of her toys as they could carry and put them in another duffle bag.
“I’m going to take this stuff out to the car,” Levi said, while Jackson began taking the table apart.
“Yeah, I’ll be done in a minute. I know Shay is going to want her table and chairs.”
“Be right back.”
Jackson was working on the last screw when Travis appeared in the doorway. In the light, he looked worse than Jackson thought.
“I want my wife back,” he said, his voice raw and ragged.
“Ain’t gonna happen.”
“This isn’t what I wanted.”
Jackson jumped up from his spot on the floor. “Not what you wanted!” He strode toward him, calling on his willpower not to knock Travis into next week.
“She won’t answer my calls. She won’t let me talk to my baby. Just ask her to call me. I need to tell her that I’m sorry.”
“Sorry. Sorry. It’s not enough Travis. Sorry will never be enough for the pain you’ve caused.” He got up on him, grabbed him by his collar. “Why? And with Carla. How could you?” He shoved him in the chest and turned back to getting the table unscrewed.
“It was all Carla,” he said in a broken voice.
“Yeah, she put a gun to your head and told you to screw up your marriage.” He picked up the parts from the table and tucked them under his arm, grabbed the quilt with his other hand and pushed by Travis in the doorway. “Get your mistress to clean this place up,” he said on his way down the stairs.
“It was her plan all along. It was never about me,” he said leaning over the railing of the staircase. “That’s what she told me after Michelle walked out on me.”
Jackson stopped at the bottom of the landing and looked up.
“It was all about hurting you and anyone that you cared about. She wanted to get back at you! You!” He tossed his head back and laughed a heart rending laugh then crumbled into a heap.
Levi was coming back through the door and took in the scene. Jackson looked like someone had died. “Jack… Hey, man, what’s going on?” His gaze rose up the staircase and for a minute he thought the worst until Travis pulled himself up and staggered back down the hallway.
“Let’s go. We have a stop to make.”
They packed up the backseat and storage area in the Explorer, just as the rain started coming down. Jackson got in behind the wheel and before Levi was barely in his seat, Jackson was tearing away from the curb.
“You want to tell me what happened back there?”
Jackson stared straight ahead. The blood was pounding in his temples. He whipped the car around the corner, drove another two streets down and screeched to a jerking stop.
Jackson’s door flew open and he jumped out, storming toward a blue and white house. He took note of the fact that Carla’s fire-engine red Altima was parked in the driveway. No other car in sight. He bounded up the four steps and pounded on the door.
Moments later the door was pulled open. From where Levi was standing she was stunning, a good ringer for Vanessa Williams. He closed his door and waited by the car. He wasn’t sure what was going on but he had a good feeling the woman in the doorway was Carla and this visit was personal.
“Jackson!” Her green eyes lit up from within.” I knew you’d come back.” She reached for him and he slapped her hand away.
“Why’d you do it, Carla?” His jaw tightened.
She jerked back.
“Huh, tell me why you did it. Tell me what Michelle ever did to you.”
Her soft expression hardened. “She had everything, a beautiful home, a husband, a daughter. And I had nothing. Nothing when you left! We were planning a life together. Me and you, Jackson,” she yelled, jamming a finger in her chest. Her skin flushed. “I wanted to have children with you!”
“It was over between us long before we made it official, Carla. You know that. Things hadn’t been right for a while.”
“It wasn’t over for me.” Tears filled her eyes. “Couldn’t you see that?” She stepped toward him and he moved away.
“Is that when you started sleeping with Travis? Were you screwing my sister’s husband when we were together?”
“No,” she whimpered. “No. Not until after you left.”
He snorted his disgust. “I guess that made it okay. I can’t imagine how I could have cared about you. How I could have thought…” He pointed a finger at her. “Go to hell and take Travis with you.” He spun away and ran down the steps.
“I hate you!”
Jackson was seeing red as he stomped back to his car. The rain was coming down heavier now but he barely noticed. Could she have been so twisted that she would use their breakup as a reason to destroy Michelle’s marriage? What kind of woman was she and how could he have been so blind to have…
Levi stopped him before he got behind the wheel. “Let me drive.”
Without a word, Jackson got into the passenger seat and they pulled off.
Zoe sat at the window watching the rain build in intensity. Thunder rumbled in the distance and periodic flashes of light illuminated the dull sky.
Her spirit felt as heavy as the clouds that hung like water balloons in the sky. She hadn’t heard from Jackson since he’d called that morning to say that they were leaving. And her calls to him had gone directly to voice mail.
Hopefully, they were close and the trip hadn’t done more damage than good. She leaned her head against the cushion of the chair and closed her eyes.
The distant ringing of her phone pierced her consciousness. She blinked against the darkness that had enveloped the room and went for the phone on the nightstand.
“Hello?”
“Hey, baby.”
“Jackson! When did you get back?”
“About twenty minutes ago. We just finished unpacking the car.”
“Are you all right?” She knew that he wasn’t even as she asked.
“Feel like some company?”
“Always,” she said.
“See you soon.”
“She said she did it because of me, Zoe,” he spoke quietly into the dimly lit bedroom. “I feel responsible.”
Zoe squeezed his hand as they lay side by side in her bed. “There is no way you could have known. You can’t blame yourself, Jack.” She turned onto her side. His outline was framed by the moonlight. She caressed his cheek. “Everyone made choices. Now they have to live with them. Carla can blame you all she wants, but in the end the choice was hers alone. Hers and Travis’s. The only person’s actions you can be responsible for are your own. That’s it.”
He turned his head to look at her. “I get that but it doesn’t stop the hurt, ya know?”
“I know, baby. I know.” She rested her head on his chest.
Jackson leaned back a bit and lifted her chin. His dark gaze skimmed over her face that to him was growing more beautiful everyday. “I’m falling in love with you, Zoe.” The words tumbled from his mouth like a prayer.
Zoe felt her heart jump. Her lips parted to speak, to tell him what had been born in her spirit but his mouth captured hers. And as she turned herself over to him she knew she heard the words echo in her soul, words that she didn’t speak.
He knows.