But I couldn't cry over any of these things. Tears had forsaken me when I needed them most, puddling in some deep, unreachable place in my chest.
I tried to keep busy, doing laundry, cleaning. But even my old standby method could not relieve me. For lunch I made sandwiches for Robert and Clarissa, and tried to eat one myself. Daddy didn't want anything. On automatic, I cleaned the few dishes and put the food away.
The inevitable turn within Daddy hit after lunch, the immobilization of shock crashing into anger. Gathering his resolve, he rose to control the situation. He called Miss Jessie to get Sylvia's phone number in Lexington, then punched the buttons with purpose. When no one answered the phone, he called again and again, knowing Katherine was there, listening to it ring. Finally she picked up.
They talked for a long time. Daddy paced in his bedroom, out of my earshot, but I now know much of what was said. After almost an hour of rational argument, Daddy's anger got the best of him until he out-and-out demanded that Katherine return. If she didn't, he'd hop in the car right then and get her. That was the worst thing he could have said. Katherine merely dug in her heels.
“See how selfish you are?” she retorted. “You can't even give me some space when I need it.”
“Space!
Is that all you call this? Katherine, you left your ring behind! Our wedding's supposed to be in a week; this is a fine time to decide you need some space.”
“Bobby, you're not listening to me. Like you haven't been listening for the past two months. I'm too messed up inside right now. I can't give you what you need. And you obviously can't give me what I need. So please, just . . . let me be.”
Daddy's voice fell to cold fury. “So you can do whatâdecide to pick up and move across the country again? Take up with somebody else?” “Bobby, don'tâ”
“Trent Baxter was right. He warned us what you would do.”
Katherine sucked in a breath. “I'm
not
the same as I was then. This is different.”
“Really?” Daddy's tone dripped with sarcasm. “Well, you couldn't prove it by me.”
He slammed down the phone.
After he'd calmed down, he tried calling back again and again, but Katherine would not answer. She finally took the phone off the hook. Daddy sank again into despair. He remained mostly in his bedroom, praying and begging God to do
something.
Hadn't he lost enough in his life?
One bright spot shimmers from that stained and worn afternoon. For some reasonâI suppose because she'd finally had all she could takeâClarissa chose that auspicious day to stand up to Alma Sue.
About an hour after school let out, Alma Sue banged on our door. I almost refused to let her in, irritated that her mama had let her come over when our household lay in such disarray. But Clarissa needed a diversion, and so I relented. Daddy remained in his room with the door closed. Robert had retreated to his bedroom as well and lay on the floor with his chin on his stacked fists, reading a softball magazine. “You two can play in the family area until 5:00,” I told Clarissa. “Then it'll be gettin' dark, and I'll have to send Alma Sue home. Keep it quiet.”
I retreated to my own bedroom and turned on the radio, leaving the door open. Clarissa had not had an easy day. I wanted to keep an eye on her, make sure Alma Sue behaved.
Lolling before the picture of LuvRush, I stared at Greg. Two hours. A shiver ran through me. He was really going to be here.
Here.
For the first time that week, real exhilaration brushed my nerves. I closed my eyes and envisioned holding him, heard his voice say, “I love you.” Suddenly I realized just how very much I needed him.
I don't know how much time had passed before the raised voices of my sister and Alma Sue attracted my attention. Sighing, I headed out to the hallway to put a lid on whatever trouble brewed. “You cheated!” I heard Clarissa declare.
“I did not.”
“You did too!”
Something in Clarissa's voiceâa tone I had not heard before. I pulled up, then edged against the wall to listen, much as I had listened ages ago to Daddy and Katherine.
“You moved those two dominoes,” Clarissa insisted. “I saw you.”
“I did
not!
You're just mad because I'm winning.”
“Well, for your information, I don't care if you're winning. But I
am
sick of you cheating. You do it
all the time!”
Alma Sue made a disgusted sound in her throat. “You're such a baby, Clarissa, you just make things up. Forget this.”
“Fine, I will!” Dominoes hissed and rattled. I peeked around the corner. Clarissa had swept them off the coffee table. She and Alma Sue faced each other, their profiles to me.
As my sister would tell me much later, that one unexpected act on her own part fueled something inside her, sort of like striking a match. Boldly, she glared at her nemesis.
Alma Sue drew to her full height and stared down at Clarissa, hands on her hips. “You wanna fight?” she challenged.
“Yeah,” Clarissa sneered back, chin jutting.
Alma Sue blinked in surprise. Then recovered. “Okay, fine. I'll count to three, and we'll start.”
Some things had not yet changed. Alma Sue still knew how to take charge. And apparently she felt not the least bit intimidated. That thought almost prompted me to intervene, but I held back, waiting.
Come on, Clarissa.
“One,” Alma Sue called.
I watched the expression on my sister's face focus, gel.
“Two.”
Clarissa raised a fist.
Uh-oh,
I thought.
I really should stop this.
“Thrâ”
Clarissa let loose her arm with fury, balled fingers slamming straight into Alma Sue's nose. The girl's eyes nearly popped out of her head.
“Waaaaah!” Alma Sue wailed. “I wasn't reeeaaaadyyy!” Her hands flew to her bleeding nostrils, and she ran out of our family room right past me, down the hall, and slammed out of our house.
I stood in her wake, mouth open, and ogled the door. Then swung back to find Clarissa equally frozen. She stared from her fist to a glistening drop of telltale blood in the domino box, and back to her fist, clearly wondering what on earth she'd done, and would she now have Alma Sue after her but good.
Then a slow smile spread across her face.
“What is goin'
on
out here?” Daddy demanded as he appeared in the hall, frustration hanging about him like a black cloud.
“Nothin', Daddy. Clarissa just punched Alma Sue in the nose, that's all.”
He twisted his face. “What?”
“Never mind, it's okay, everything's under control.” I hurried to Clarissa's side and started gathering the dominoes off the floor.
Daddy hung there, only half seeing us.
“Go on, Daddy, it's okay. Really.”
He put a hand to his forehead and retreated back to his bedroom.
I picked up the domino box, smiling wickedly at the bloodstain. “Proof.”
Clarissa giggled. It was a joyous sound.
“Daddy.” I knocked on his door at 5:30.
“What is it?”
I stuck my head inside his room, my stomach quivering both with anticipation of Greg's arrival and with guilt. Daddy sat in his chair, Bible on his lap. I could see circles under his eyes.
“Are you . . . okay?” I asked.
“Fine.”
I slipped over to sit on the edge of the bed. “Daddy, we know where Katherine's stayin'. Maybe you should go there tomorrow, talk to her.”
“I've tried and tried to talk to her this afternoon, Jackie. She won't even answer the phone now. And she certainly wouldn't let me in the door.”
I focused on my lap. “I know she loves you, Daddy.”
“Well, she has an odd way of showin' it.” He ran a thumb up and down the side of his Bible. For a moment I watched him in silence.
I drew a deep breath. “Greg's goin' to be comin' over soon.”
Daddy's eyes closed. “Yeah.”
“We were goin' to go out to a movie or somethin'. Is that still okay?” “How will Greg keep from bein' recognized?”
I fingered the edging on his bedspread. “He probably won't, Daddy, not anymore. We'll try to find an out-of-the-way place. But this is just . . . somethin' we'll always have to deal with.”
Always.
I regretted the word the moment it left my mouth. It could only remind Daddy of what he'd lost.
Daddy sighed deeply, then gave me a wan smile. “Jackie, you don't need to feel guilty. I know you've been through a lot of upheaval. I know you've missed Greg. Just let yourself be glad he's back.”
My throat tightened. I walked over to hug him, and he patted my back. “Thank you.”
“Now listen.” He pointed his finger at me. “You're either in a restaurant or a movie, or you're comin' home, understand? You're notâ”
“I know, I know.”
We exchanged a weary smile.
“Go on now and get ready.” He nudged me away. “I'll take care of makin' supper for Robert and Clarissa.”
For the next half hour, I paced the house, waiting, watching the street. My anticipation built until I could hardly breathe. “You're gonna wear out the floor,” Robert commented. When I thought I could bear it no more, I heard a car pull up to the curb.
“Oh.” I waved my hands. “They're here.”
“Lemme say hi first, lemme go!” Clarissa trotted down the hall and threw open the front door. I sailed up behind her, cold air whisking into the hall. Greg was climbing out of the car, a black leather coat over his jeans. At the mere sight of him, something within me cracked open like a fissure. I pushed past Clarissa and stepped out onto the porch, chest fluttering. “Hi!”
“Jackie!”
He hurried up the sidewalk, and I ran down the steps until we flung ourselves into each other's arms. I pressed my face into his neck, not caring that his brother and sister-in-law looked on, not to mention Clarissa. “Greg,” I breathed into his skin, smelling the leather of his coat. “Greg.” He pressed the back of my head, fingers clutching my hair until it pulled.
“I am here for you now, Jackie.”
I burst into tears and clung to him, shivering, not wanting to let go. Greg could not let go either, his hands sliding from my hair to my shoulders to my head again, as if he couldn't quite believe he held me at all.
“You still love me?” he whispered.
“Of course,
I still love you; I never stopped.”
The ache in his voice bore a hole right through meâthat he would have to ask that question
again.
My released emotions flooded through my limbs. How could I ever have betrayed him? How had we gotten through these last months apart? And how would all of usâDaddy especiallyâget through the coming days now?
I dug my fingers into the back of Greg's coat and shuddered against the cold.
“I am here for you now, Jackie. I am here.”
D
addy tried again and again Friday night to call Katherine. With each vain attempt, his hope dwindled. For the third time in his life, he'd lost the woman he loved. He'd once have thought the past two times had tempered the steel within him. Not so now. Celia's betrayal years ago and, far worse, Mama's death, had compromised his strength, weakened it, and now he felt he just might break. But he couldn't. He had children who were also hurting and who needed his care. He needed to focus what little energy he possessed on them.
And so he ceased his desperate pursuit of Katherine May King.
That's when the town intervened.
Over the course of that Saturday, an idea was born, conceived through numerous conversations between Miss Jessie and Celia. I knew at least the main points of Celia's story. I had not known that Miss Jessie nearly left Bradleyville herself when she was twenty-four, walking away from Lee. She had turned around only by the grace of God.
Like Pastor Beekins had preached, God can turn our mistakes from the past into good. I'd clung to that belief for myself over the last few months. Now I would see it put to the test.
Amidst our sadness, Greg's presence pulled our family through that Saturday. He spent the day at our house, doing everything he could to help. He took time with Robertâplayed computer games with him, sat in his room and asked one question after another about softball, which Robert gladly answered. Greg watched TV with Clarissa and listened in awe to her tale of punching Alma Sue in the nose. When she got the notion to bake cookies, Greg aimed a pleading expression my way. What did he know about baking? Clarissa got him into an apron, which she thought hysterically funny, and the three of us made cookies together. The heavenly smell brought Robert out of his room, and we all sat around the table making pigs of ourselves while Greg told us about his tour.
Daddy wandered in from the garage, which he'd suddenly decided needed some cleaning out. While I heated some soup for him and made a salad, Greg engaged him in conversation, asking him about the banking business, about growing up in Bradleyville. Anything to try and get his mind off Katherine. Daddy, in turn, asked him about the LuvRush tour and how did Greg keep up with his studies, and what challenges the group faced next.
They got to know each other more that day than they had in all the previous months put together.
In the evening, we gathered around the television. Daddy focused sightlessly on the screen. One week from now was to have been his wedding night. The thought churned in my head like stormy waters. I squeezed Greg's hand, anchoring myself only by his strength.
Sunday morning, Daddy decided not to go to church. “I don't want to face people right now,” he told me privately. “I just don't want to deal with the questions and everything else. You take the kids and go.”
Although I hated to think of him alone in the house, part of me felt glad he would not be in church. What bad timing for him to lay eyes on Danny Cander for the first time in nearly twenty years. I knew that old rivalry had long since died. All the same, he represented more unpleasant memories Daddy did not need.