OVER THE FOLLOWING week, I was surprised when both Phillip and the office started calling less frequently. Even Mel Townsend had finally gotten the message and stopped calling.
I told myself that the churning sensation I experienced in my gut had nothing to do with concern that I was losing hold on my life in Boston. I reminded myself of Phillip telling me we made a good team. And since I don’t do the weak emotion thing, and ruling out the possibility of Phillip’s potential desertion, I decided I needed to come up with a plan to introduce my fiancé into my family and let him know that I wasn’t exactly who he thought I was.
Fortunately, by juggling the girls’ parties, whipping the girls and their escorts into shape for the big night, and working the case, my days were consumed. Who needs time to think, really?
Thankfully, on those occasions I had to deal with opposing counsel, I managed to do so without throwing myself at him. However, I didn’t like admitting that it was harder than it should have been, and I’m convinced the only thing that saved me from the pressing need to have my way with him on his conference room table was his constant digging, his repeated demands of more money for his client. A real turnoff. Thank God. Plus, he was engaged. I was engaged. And while I hadn’t been completely forthcoming to my coworkers in Boston about my past, I was not someone who had her way with men who were not her fiancé.
Also in the plus column, Jack’s constant digging into my mother’s net worth helped me refine my own case as to why there was no way in hell my mother was going to give up one red cent more than was prescribed in the prenup. I would conform to the letter of the law, no question, but that didn’t preclude doling out the info in tiny pieces as it suited me.
I had been in Texas nearly three months, the days growing warmer, and with those strange exceptions of Wednesdays at noon, my mother still spent an inordinate amount of time in bed. I would have questioned her about the Wednesday thing if I hadn’t been so relieved by the better mood it brought about.
Savannah grew bigger by the day, probably more so because of her determination to eat for two. My always tiny, looks-obsessed sister suddenly didn’t care about anything but the child she was going to have. Ben, ever vigilant, watched over her as if he could ensure nothing bad happened to his precious wife. It was as touching as it was cloyingly sweet.
Janice and Morgan existed in a suspended standoff that I prayed would hold until after the ball was over. Then they could do whatever they wanted. Run away from home. Send daughters off to boarding schools. Whatever. Just don’t screw up my ball.
With the parties over (and the gnomes not making the news) I felt a growing sense of excitement \ex-cite-ment\ n (1600—give or take a few years) brought on by 1: finding proof that the prenup should stand 2: knowing I could show that Vincent hadn’t contributed to any bottom line that had anything to do with Lucky Stars Farm 3: making headway with turning the girls into ladies. Soon I would accomplish it all, and then be able to return to my other life with a clean conscience.
I was sitting on my mother’s veranda to get away from the growing afternoon heat inside, my case notes in my lap, and all seemed surprisingly right with the world when Jack pulled up into the front drive.
“We need to talk,” he said, stepping out of his black Suburban.
“About what?”
“The case.”
“Then talk.”
“Not here. Somewhere private.”
“How very Deep Throat of you. If you want, we can find a parking garage somewhere, though that might entail driving to San Antonio.”
“Do you want to hear what I have to say, or not?” he added, striding up onto the veranda.
The phone beside me rang. We both glanced at the caller ID. Massachusetts. I knew right away whose cell phone number it was. Uh-oh.
“Phillip, I take it,” Jack noted.
I made a face. “No.”
Sue me.
I ignored the call. I didn’t want a replay of the last time I spoke to Phillip with Jack looking on.
“Let’s go in the kitchen to talk. Lupe has gone to the grocery store. My mother is upstairs in bed. Henry is at work. Savannah is at Willow Creek Collegiate demanding a spot for her future child. I can’t swear where Janice is, but the kids are upstairs doing who knows what. Basically, that’s about as much peace, quiet, and/or privacy as we are going to get around here.”
I stood and headed inside, not waiting for an answer.
In the kitchen, I poured two glasses of sweet tea to ward off the heat. The back door was ajar, the windows open. Despite my mother’s wealth, she flatly refused to turn on the air conditioner before the first of May regardless of the temperature. It was a rule, sort of like no white shoes before Easter.
“What’s up?” I asked, motioning him toward the table.
“I thought we might talk settlement.”
Interesting. It seemed both too late and too soon to be talking settlement. “You can talk, I’m happy to listen.”
He walked over to the table. He wore a white button-down shirt with enough starch in it to make it stand on its own, tucked into pressed Wrangler jeans, roper boots, and a sport coat. Typical Texas menswear.
Sitting down across from me, he pulled a piece of notepaper from his jacket pocket. No briefcase, no folder, nothing. Just a folded piece of paper in his pocket. Unfolding the sheet, he spread it out in front of him.
“As I see it,” he began, “I can clearly show that Lucky Stars has dramatically improved since Vincent has been spending time there—”
“Gambling.”
“That’s not the point.”
“What is the point?”
“Improvement. Lucky Stars was a mess. Now it’s making money.”
“No thanks to Vincent.”
“Vincent was there during the turnaround.”
“Again, gambling.”
“I say he was there working.”
“There is absolutely no evidence of that.”
“There is circumstantial evidence.”
“As in?”
“He was there, and during that time they made more money. A lot more money, based on what I can see. Speaking of which, I’m getting tired of your piecemeal method of disclosure.”
“Me? Piecemeal?” I gave him an innocent smile.
“Not funny.”
“I wasn’t trying to be.”
Noise erupted, no surprise there, from the upper regions of the house. A crash, followed by yelling, screaming, and fighting.
“God, what now?” I said with a groan.
Cinco banged into the kitchen. “It’s a lunatic asylum up there,” he announced, then studied Jack. “Who are you?”
“I’m Jack.” He extended his hand.
Cinco shook, then let go. Jack smiled wryly, then reached for a napkin to wipe away chocolate.
“Hey, you want to play poker with me?” Cinco asked.
Without waiting for an answer, he dashed out, his footsteps banging through the house, before he returned with cards and a container of poker chips.
“Cinco, Mr. Blair is here on business.”
Jack shrugged. “I could play a round or two.”
Within seconds, they were deep into the game. Cinco provided chocolate cigars for both of them, which Jack surprised me by accepting. When I realized I was not needed, or wanted, and the heat of the kitchen was growing by the second, I left. And amazingly, the game continued and was going strong when I returned an hour later. With one difference. Each player had several empty cellophane wrappers in front of them, and chocolate covered just about everything else in the room.
I cringed at the trouble I knew was coming from Lupe over the mess, from Janice over the inevitable sugar buzz, and my mother over the fingerprints on her tablecloth.
Jack looked up. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey, yourself.”
I walked over to the table. “If I were you two, I’d get this place cleaned up before anyone else finds you.”
“In just a second,” Jack said, tossing in some more pennies.
“Yeah, in a second,” Cinco echoed, tossing in his own pennies.
The players sat back and eyed each other.
“Am I bluffing?” Jack teased.
Cinco looked on with the seriousness of a general. He twirled the melting cigar slowly, chocolate coating his fingers. Then he shoved every last penny he had in front of him into the center. “I call.”
The boy set his cards down like a chocolate-covered fan. Jack debated, then said, “You got me.”
Cinco’s eyes went wide, then he leaped up. “I win! I win!”
Jack folded his cards without showing them, but Cinco was too high on sugar, apparently, to notice.
Cinco swept up the pile of pennies, and raced out of the kitchen.
I glanced at Jack, then picked up his cards before he could stop me. “A straight flush. Hmmm, I guess this is a new version of the game where that doesn’t beat a pair of aces.”
And right there I felt something different for Jack. Different from the need to take him on conference tables or even strangle him. Different from the need to run every time I was afraid he was the one man who could turn me into my mother.
I felt something warm and soft inside which I suspected would be called emotion \e-mo-tion\ n (1660) 1: sensory stimulation 2: subjective reaction experienced in response to a state of mental agitation 3: those things I didn’t do.
I folded the cards and set them down. “Who would have guessed Jack Blair, former bad boy and current ruthless killer lawyer, could be nice to a kid?”
He pushed back in his chair and stood. He came so close to me that my heart banged against my ribs. It was hard enough to stand near him when I wanted nothing more from him than something physical. But now, with those unfortunate feelings coursing through me like hormones in a thirteen-year-old girl, I felt like, well, a thirteen-year-old girl.
Jack stared at me. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but I can safely say that darkly brooding Jack had returned.
I felt rattled.
Concentrate, Carlisle, I told myself.
Forcefully, I managed to turn away and retrieve 409 and paper towels. I told myself to clean. Chocolate was everywhere. Lupe and my mother would hit the ceiling if they walked in and found the mess.
“Why does it keep coming back to you and me?” Jack asked, as if he were trying to understand and wasn’t particularly thrilled with the answer that came to mind.
I hated that I wondered the same thing. Year after year, encounter after encounter, no matter how I pushed Jack Blair out of my mind, he always came back again.
“I’m happy. I have a great life. I love the idea of spending the rest of my days with Racine.” He sighed in frustration. “I’m not going to screw this up.”
There had been so many near misses with him. Each time my breath held for fear I would dive headlong into Jack Blair. It was no different three years earlier when I did finally dive in, like leaping from a bridge, praying a bungee cord was attached. Unfortunately it wasn’t.
I was in the WCU law library where I had gone to cram before I took the bar exam. I had graduated top of my class, but that didn’t stop me from being obsessively nervous about the bar.
Concentrating in the echoing silence in the law library, I wasn’t aware Jack had walked up to me until he sat down at my table, the scrape of the hardwood chair legs against hardwood flooring echoing in the quiet space.
I looked up, startled.
“Hey,” he said, crossing his arms on the heavy wooden table, the arching green shaded lamp casting light on my stack of books and papers.
“Hey,” I managed.
“How’ve you been?”
“Great. Fine. Better than fine.”
My mother had wondered (not without cause) how someone as sexually unsophisticated as I came from her loins. And I swear she uses the word “loins.”
“And you?” I asked.
Other than seeing him a few times when I was a first-year law student, he a third year, I had managed to keep a safe distance from him.
He tugged the study guidebook away from me. Turning it around, he read a question from the page I had been working on, answered it, smiled with the arrogant pride that on him only seemed endearing, then said, “You look like you could use a burger at Moe’s.”
He closed the workbook and started to stand. I lurched across the table and grabbed it.
“I can’t. I have to study.”
We stood on opposite sides of the table, the library’s echoing silence surrounding us, the oversized paperback book caught in our hands.
“Come on,” he cajoled.
I stood my ground.
“I tell you what,” he said. “We’ll go to Moe’s, sit in a back booth, and I’ll quiz you.”
“I’m serious, Jack. No.” I tugged hard on the book and he let it go. “I can’t go to Moe’s.”
Then, almost frantically because I wanted very much to damn all I knew about men and women and especially this kind of man and how things would end up, I gathered my stack of books, papers falling around me, my pencil dropping with a clatter on the floor. Without stopping to pick it up, I said goodbye and dashed out of the library.
It was the hardest thing I had ever done. I wanted him. Had since that first day I laid eyes on him. And based on the look in his eyes, he wanted me too. Still.
But fleeing, I told myself I couldn’t.
Really.
It would never work between us.
I couldn’t deal with the kind of need for a man that had ruled my mother’s life—the kind of need that made it impossible to breathe when self-worth was wrapped up in “I love yous.”
I banged outside through the heavy wooden doors of the law library, hurrying down the wide stone steps, my books held in my arms. My senses were heightened, the smell of budding honeysuckle hitting me in the face, the sound of the door opening behind me.
“Carlisle!”
I didn’t stop.
“Carlisle, come on.”
Despite all the screaming my brain was doing to keep going, my feet stopped of their own volition. Squeezing my eyes shut for half a second, I told myself no. But I turned around. It was a shame how little control I had around this guy.
Jack strode toward me with a crooked smile on his face. When he stopped in front of me I held my breath.
“You forgot this,” he said, holding up the pencil.
I stared at it for half a second, then dropped my stack of books and took the steps that separated us.
I swear.
After years of avoiding just that, standing outside the WCU law library, I was in his arms. That day my cell phone rang, my mother’s number appearing as if she had an unerring ability to find me just when I was about to dive into Jack Blair. But unlike the other times, I ignored her, ignored her call, refused to listen to any messages. I turned off the phone, and let him take my hand and drive me to his apartment on his Harley, my arms wrapped around his black leather jacket.
For one amazing month I dove in. We came together on the dining table, the kitchen floor, the back booth at Pete’s Bar and Grill. I raced through Willow Creek on the back of his motorcycle, oblivious to the stares, the talk. I lost myself to everything I felt for Jack Blair.
I ignored my mother and her latest marriage to a handsome poet half her age who made her laugh and cry in equal measure. I pretended that I was born of a woman who had at least a fleeting awareness of sane and stable marriage. I acted as though I knew all about normal relationships. At least I did until I woke up in Jack’s bed one morning, tangled in his sheets, only to realize belatedly it was the day of the exam.
In a panic, I leaped out of bed. When Jack woke and tried to pull me back, I slapped at his hand.
“I have to go! I’m late! I’m going to miss the bar.”
He just smiled that crooked smile and reached for me. “Take it later.”
As if it were that easy. They only gave the exam two times a year. I’d have to wait six months in order to take it again.
“That isn’t acceptable. I’m not like you, Jack, irresponsible, only doing whatever suits you,” I said as I threw on my clothes, hopping around on one foot as I crammed on my high heels without the panty hose I couldn’t find, then careened to the university where the bar exam was being given. But I was twenty minutes late, the doors already locked. I stood outside that exam room hyperventilating, begging the moderator through gasping breaths to let me in. To no avail.
That day, standing outside the closed oak doors of the testing room, I couldn’t believe what I had done. My plans, the timeline of my life, shot. And when my mother called to tell me she was divorcing the poet, demanding through her tears that I tangle myself in yet another mess of extracting her from the disaster she had made, I felt the moment I cracked. I started to cry, me, sensible Carlisle Cushing, right there in front of the guard manning the door.
To the world my mother was amazing—vibrant, alive—beautiful like fine porcelain. But what no one else seemed to understand, not even my sister, was that while our mother was indeed like porcelain she had been broken, more than once, then repaired each time so expertly that only I could see the cracks. I had learned that my mother’s happiness and self-worth came from being loved by a man. When they’d inevitably had enough and left, she broke a little more.
Standing there next to the door monitor who stood between me and my goal, I felt the fissure snake through me, not from my self-worth being wrapped up in a man, but from the pressure of a life I finally admitted I didn’t know how to manage.
I was drowning in Jack and my mother, irresponsibility and unwanted obligation like cement boots pulling me under. So I did the only thing a sensible girl could do. I opened the big atlas in the Wainwright House study to the map of North America, closed my eyes, and took a stab at the page. My finger landed in the Atlantic Ocean, but it was reasonably close to Nova Scotia, Maine, and Boston. You know the rest.
I left Willow Creek without a word to anyone, including Jack and my mother.
In retrospect, it sounds ridiculous. I’m not proud of not being brave enough to think things through before departing to what seemed like saner climes. And maybe, just maybe, I had come back to Texas to undo that mistake—not to stay, mind you, but to stay longer than those quick trips I had made home in the past. Maybe this time I could make amends to my mother for leaving her in the lurch, putting her in a position that allowed her last divorce to become a line item on the Wainwright family ledgers, and to Jack for leaving without explanation. Perhaps this way I could move on and finally set a date to marry Phillip.
“Fuck,” Jack said, though this time it was a proverbial fuck and in the present day.
We stared at each other in my mother’s kitchen, neither wanting to feel all we felt for the other, though neither of us knowing how to break the hold.
“Aunt Carlisle!”
Tiny footsteps raced down the corridor toward the kitchen, jarring us, before little hands hit the swinging door with a boom, throwing it open.
“Aunt Carlisle!” Priscilla yelled despite the fact that I wasn’t more than three feet away. “You got company!”
Jack and I glanced at the door, just as it swung open again.
“Carlisle?”
“Phillip!” I managed, and dropped the 409 on the floor.