Chapter 26
Terrence
“She’s all yours, Mr. Murdoch,” the car salesman said with a bleached-white grin as he rose from his desk and extended the keys toward Terrence.
Terrence slowly lowered the ballpoint pen to the salesman’s desk, pushed away the stack of documents in front of him, and hesitated. He stared at the dangling keys like a recovering alcoholic would stare at a bottle of gin—with a mix of longing and fear. He wanted badly to take the keys, but he was scared he might regret it later.
“You don’t have to be scared, Terry,” Dr. “How Do You Feel About That?” had told him during his last therapy session earlier that week. “It’s been several months now. Your doctor okayed you to drive again. Don’t you think you’re finally ready?”
Maybe he was, but still, he wished he had planned this better. He had purchased a new car on impulse after he saw a double-page ad in one of the men’s magazines he got in the mail. The new Porsche Boxster GTS . . . not identical to the last car that he had owned and totaled, but certainly a close enough replica. The instant he saw it, he called the car charter service that he had been using for the past month and asked them to take him to the Porsche dealership just outside of Chesterton. He hadn’t even bothered to test-drive the damn thing. He didn’t want to lose his nerve when he climbed behind the wheel. Instead, he had pointed to the car as soon as he stepped into the showroom.
“How can I help you, sir?” asked the salesman in the sharkskin suit with his hair loaded with so much gel that it glistened under the showroom’s lights. “Any particular vehicle you’re interested in today?”
“I want that one,” Terrence had said boldly, still pointing his index finger at the Boxster GTS.
“Wow! You’re a man who knows what he wants, huh?” The salesman had guffawed and slapped him on his shoulder so hard that it stung.
“Yeah, I . . . I guess you could say that.”
But now Terrence regretted his boldness.
What the hell was I thinking? He now wondered.
The salesman’s grin started to wane when Terrence made no move to take the car keys. “Is something wrong, Mr. Murdoch?”
“Uh, no. No, everything’s fine,” Terence said with a forced smile before finally reaching for the keys. The cool metal and plastic felt heavy in his hand. He reached for his cane and slowly rose to his feet.
“Does your wife or girlfriend know you bought a new car today?” the salesman asked.
Terrence stared down at the keys in his palm, transfixed by the Porsche emblem. “It’s girlfriend and no . . . no, she doesn’t know I bought a car.”
“Ah, well! Then this will be a big surprise!”
Terrence nodded, though the truth was that C. J. wouldn’t give a damn that he had bought a new Porsche. She would more likely chide him about it.
“Your penis is fine, Terry,” she would say dryly with a smirk once she saw the gleaming roadster. “You don’t have to drive around in a fake one.”
But she would be proud of him for overcoming his fears, for finally taking the last step he needed to move on with his life, to prove that he had finally left that horrible accident and all the aftermath that came with it, behind him.
“It was a pleasure working with you, Mr. Murdoch,” the salesman said, extending his hand for a shake.
“Thanks,” Terrence mumbled before resting his cane on the edge of the table and shaking the salesman’s hand distractedly.
When Terrence climbed onto the car’s leather seat ten minutes later, inhaling the soothing new car fragrance, he felt a rush filled with a mix of excitement and anxiety. He buckled his seatbelt, checking the fastener once, twice, and then three times to make sure it was secure. He inserted his key and listened to the engine rumble to life. He ran his hands over the leather steering wheel and sat back in the driver’s seat, staring out the windshield, working up the will to press the accelerator and pull out of the parking space.
“You can’t sit here forever, Terry,” the voice said in his head.
“I know that,” he whispered fiercely, feeling the panic rise within him. His heart galloped. His grip on the steering wheel tightened. His breathing became shallower and shallower. The car’s compartment started to feel smaller and smaller; it was like the roof and the side doors were pressing in on him.
What if he pulled off and made a wrong turn and sideswiped someone? What if the wheel spun out of his hands and he jumped the curb and hit some poor pedestrian, or he stopped at a stoplight and someone rear-ended him, sending him careening into oncoming traffic? He had lost an eye and fractured a leg in his last car accident. What if he lost his life this time around?
“You’ll be fine, Terry,” C. J.’s voice suddenly whispered in his ear. “I have every confidence in you.”
At the thought of her, his breathing and his heartbeat slowed. His grip on the steering wheel loosened.
“Now put the pedal to the metal and come and see me!” her voice ordered huskily, making a reluctant smile spring to Terrence’s lips.
Terrence did just that, shifting the Roadster into Drive and pulling out of the dealership’s parking lot.
Twenty minutes later, Terrence pulled into the lot of C. J.’s apartment complex, gliding into one of the few empty spaces. He turned off the car engine and released a long breath. It hadn’t been an easy drive. He had been tense for the first five minutes of the car ride, driving so slow that a woman who had to be in her eighties had blared her horn at him and passed him while giving him the evil eye. He finally started to relax as he drew closer to C. J.’s apartment, keeping a vision of her face in his mind the rest of the way.
As he opened the Roadster’s car door, he saw a vision of her again—this time in the flesh. Terrence squinted as he watched C. J. walk toward her Honda Civic, dragging a suitcase on rollers behind her. Or at least, he thought it was C. J. At this distance, he couldn’t say for sure because she looked so different.
“C. J.?” he called to her as he climbed out of his Porsche.
She paused just as she opened her trunk. She turned her head to look in his direction. A smile brightened her face. “Terry, hey!” She waved.
He crossed the parking lot, all the while staring at her in confusion.
She was wearing a suit—a pale blue ensemble with pearl buttons down the front and along the cuffs and a skirt that fell just below her knees. She had finished the outfit with sensible heels of the same shade as her suit. She had straightened her hair, too. Gone were the corkscrew curls he knew and loved and in their place was a shag haircut that fell over her shoulders. She was even wearing makeup.
C. J. looked like someone had abducted her and forced her to undergo a makeover—the Stepford Wife edition.
“What the . . . what did you do to your hair?” he said, reaching out to run his fingers through her tresses.
“Nothing!” she cried, smacking his hand away. She smoothed her hair back into place, looking somewhat embarrassed. “I just got it flat-ironed. I used to wear my hair like this all the time until . . . well . . . a few years ago.” She paused and gazed at him. “What? You don’t like it?”
Terrence shrugged. “It’s not bad, I guess. I just wasn’t expecting it.” He let his eye slowly travel over her. His focus settled on the suitcase leaning against her rear tire. “Are you going somewhere?”
She nodded almost apologetically. “I was heading to North Carolina. I didn’t get the chance to tell you. I-I figured you were busy with your family stuff. I didn’t want to bother you.”
His newly minted girlfriend was disappearing somewhere and she didn’t think she needed to tell him that? He couldn’t help but be a little offended and irritated.
“You wouldn’t be bothering me, babe. I’d want to know something like this. What if I showed up and found you had just . . . just disappeared? That wouldn’t have been cool.”
She lowered her eyes. “I know. I’m sorry. I should have told you. But honestly, Terry, I would have called from the road to tell you. Besides, I’ll be back before you know it. It’ll only be a couple of days. You’ll barely notice that I’m gone.”
Oh, he’d notice! It was alarming how quickly he had gotten addicted to this woman and her reassuring presence. But she was allowed to have a life. She was allowed to do things without him.
“So what’s in North Carolina anyway? Are you headed to a news assignment?”
“No, nothing like that.” She paused to toss her suitcase into the trunk. “My family is there. It’s also the home base of Aston Ministries. They invited me to come down.”
Terrence grinned. “That’s great! So your dad is finally willing to talk to you? He wants to make up with you?”
She closed the trunk and pursed her lips. “Sort of.”
“Sort of? What does that mean?”
“He wants to make up . . . but it kind of comes with strings attached.”
Terrence’s smile faded.
“There’s some dustup within the church. It’s bad, Terry. Really bad. And it’s happening just when Dad is thinking about running for office. He wants us to show a united front, so he asked me if I would—”
“Go back to being Courtney Jocelyn Aston. Go back to pretending you’re the perfect family,” Terrence finished for her, slowly shaking his head. “Babe, I thought you told me you didn’t want to do that anymore.”
“I don’t. And . . . and I’m not! I’m still going to be me. I’m not letting my dad and my brother pull the same manipulative bullshit that they used to, but I agreed to do a few press conferences and meet and greets . . . to stand smiling in the background while he or Victor talked. I’ll do a few on-camera interviews. That’s all.”
So that’s what the makeover was all about. Reverend Aston wanted his daughter to look prim, proper, and perfect on camera.
“Are you sure that’s all?” Terrence asked, taking a step toward her. “Just look at you, C. J.! You even look like a different person. First you agreed to do phone interviews and now they’re asking you to do TV press conferences. What’s next? Asking you to get engaged to that guy again to distract everyone from their latest church fiasco?”
She impatiently sighed and rolled her eyes. “Terry, give me some credit!”
“They’re asking you to lie! They’re asking you to do the same stuff that—”
“No,” she said steadfastly, “they’re asking me for love without judgment. ‘Do not judge others, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn others, or it will all come back against you. Forgive others, and you will be forgiven.’ ”
He raised his brows. “Oh, we’re quoting the Bible now? Well, you’d better flip it open again, because I’m pretty sure there’s plenty of shit in there about not bearing false witness.”
“Terry, I’m doing this for something I know you consider even more sacred than the Bible: family loyalty. It’s something I would think that you of all people would understand!”
“The stuff with my family is different. You know that!”
“Oh, really?” She took a step toward him. “How many times do you go to bat for your brother or sister, Terry? How many times did you look the other way or put on a brave face for your dad?”
He fell silent.
She stood on the balls of her feet, looped her arms around his neck, and kissed him. Despite his frustration, he wrapped his arms around her and kissed her back.
“Nothing will change, if that’s what you’re worried about,” she said a minute later against his lips. “I’ll still be C. J., even if I look different.”
He pressed his forehead against hers. He wanted to believe it, but a gnawing in his stomach told him differently. This was a slippery slope of compromises in the name of family, and he feared that C. J. would be too far downhill before she realized what was happening, or how much she really would change.
She tugged away from him, seeming to do it with great reluctance. “I should get going. I told them I’d arrive there by tonight to do prep work for the conference.”
A few minutes later, she was behind the wheel of the car and he was standing on the curb, watching as she put her key in the ignition.
“I’ll see you in a couple of days,” she said after lowering the car window and smiling up at him. “By then I’ll probably be feenin’ for my Terry fix.” She laughed.
Tinkling piano keys, he thought, remembering the first time he heard her laugh at the charity banquet. That’s what he thought her laugh sounded like, piano keys going up and down the scale.
“See you soon,” she said with a wave, before driving off.
Terrence watched her until she pulled out of the parking lot and turned onto the roadway.