Reflection Point: An Eternity Springs Novel (26 page)

She turned back to Zach and asked, “Have you been into Vistas recently? Sage has acquired a new artist. He lives near Durango and he paints wildlife. She has one painting he’s done of an elk up on Sinner’s Prayer Pass that takes your breath away.”

With that, talk returned to generic topics and TJ didn’t participate, but instead sat behind them fuming. When they finally reached the Eternity Springs city limits sign, Savannah wanted to cheer. Once Zach pulled up in front of the house, she asked him, “Would you like to come in for a few minutes? Let me show TJ where to put his things, then I’d like to speak with you.”

“Tell you what. Let me drop off my wheels at the office, then I’ll stop back. I rode my bike in this morning.”

“You bought a new bicycle, didn’t you? Cam had a bet on how long you’d resist it.”

Zach grinned that devilish smile of his. “I heard. I waited one day past the date he’d bet on.” He glanced over her shoulder, then deliberately leaned down and kissed her softly on her mouth. “See you in twenty.”

Zach drove away and Savannah turned to see TJ scowling after him.
So, Zach was staking his claim with that kiss, was he?

Of course he had been. Savannah sighed, then muttered with disgust, “Boys.”

TJ’s insides were churning. Not like he was gonna be sick, but like he was gonna puke, roaring like he was gonna explode. He imagined flames shooting out of his mouth, laser beams zapping from his eyes, and steam blowing out of his ears. Not like a cartoon character,
though. Like a monster. TJzilla. He wanted to grow a thousand feet tall and stomp all over Eternity effing Springs.

Instead, he stood silent and unmoving, waiting for his drunk dad’s druggie sister to tell him where to put his stuff.

She gave him a fake smile, then proceeded to tell him that the first floor of her house was a shop. “We can use the kitchen and downstairs bathroom, but since we share it with the shop, we need to be sure to keep everything very clean. I prefer you shower only upstairs.”

He almost told her,
That’s okay, I don’t shower
, but the idea of not showering grossed even him out.

“I closed the shop today so that we could have a chance to get you settled in. Ordinarily we’re open nine to eight Monday through Saturday and one to six on Sunday through Labor Day. After that, we’ll go to winter hours and most of the business will be by mail order. It’s a little weird living above the store, but you’ll get accustomed to it. Follow me and I’ll show you your room.”

She led him up the stairs and down a short hallway. “I thought I’d let you choose. I have a regular bedroom here that is two doors away from the bathroom, or you could use the attic room. It has heat and a bed, but it’s less convenient. On the other hand, it’s more private and bigger, and you could do what you want to—within reason—with the space. The choice is up to you.”

He knew without looking that he wanted the attic. The farther away from her, the better.

It was an awesome space, and for a few minutes he forgot to be pissed. Because the house had a high pitched roof and a lot of dormer windows, the attic room had nooks and crannies that made it interesting. It’d be cool to live up here. “This’ll do.”

“Okay, then. I have a friend, Celeste Blessing, who has
a treasure trove of furniture and other items that she’s offered for you to choose from to decorate your space.”

“Whatever.”

She stared at him like a cockroach in the kitchen. He tried to give her his don’t-give-a-shit smile, but he was afraid he couldn’t pull it off, so he went with sauntering over to the bed and throwing his duffel and backpack on top of it. “Where’s the pisser?”

After a long moment’s pause, she replied, “Consider this fair warning. I’m going to give you today, TJ. No matter how hard you try to hide it, I know this must be a very difficult day for you. Frankly, it has been for me. So I’m going to give both of us today. The
bathroom
”—she emphasized the word—“is the first door to the left at the bottom of the attic stairs. Supper is at six.”

She left him then—just in time, thank God, because he felt the tears welling up inside him and he’d rather die than let her see him cry. But the minute he was alone, he sprawled across the bed and bawled like a baby until at some point he fell asleep.

He slept until four o’clock, and when he woke up, he did need to use the crapper. Glancing in the mirror as he washed his hands, he scowled at puffy, red eyes. This sucked.

He went snooping for eyedrops in the drawers and cabinet. When he saw tampons, fingernail polish, and powder-scent antiperspirant instead of shaving lotion and nose hair clippers, he experienced a pang in his chest all over again. He blew out a breath and found anger to replace the pain. Then his gaze fell on an unopened package of eyedrops. Five minutes later, he was sneaking down the staircase hoping to escape the house without his aunt’s notice.

He heard her talking to someone and he stopped to eavesdrop.

“… his hair. He’s not going to fit in and make friends
looking like that. I don’t know much about kids, but I do know if I say anything it will backfire.”

Another woman said, “I don’t envy you, Savannah. At least with Alex, I get fourteen years to get ready to have a fourteen-year-old. You didn’t even have a week.”

TJ silently mocked the woman.
You didn’t even have a week. Try being on it from my side, lady
.

Downstairs, he turned away from the voices and made his way through the shop to the front door, where a rectangular sign reading OPEN faced him. He unlocked the door, and as he went out, he flipped the sign around so that OPEN faced the street rather than the word CLOSED.

“Serves her right for talking about me behind my back,” he declared.

At the end of the walk, he looked both ways. One direction appeared to be just as boring as the other. He headed west, then turned north on a wide street named Spruce, noting that her house was on Fourth so that he could find his way … not home. Never home. Back to his aunt’s house.

He shoved his hands in his pockets as he strolled up the street. His fingers found the money the lawyer had given him for his trip, so when he passed a sandwich shop, he went inside and ordered a soft drink. He couldn’t help but notice that the girl behind the counter had a nose ring.

He wondered if hers was real or fake like his.

He wandered into a gift shop, where the clerk pointed out the NO FOOD OR DRINK sign on the front door. He considered “accidentally” dropping his cup on his way outside, but he still had half of it left. As he walked past the barber shop, he noticed the barber’s disapproving stare, so he grinned and gave his spikes a pat. Good thing he knew how to use the clippers himself and didn’t have to count on anyone else to cut his hair.

TJ didn’t want to have to count on anyone else for anything.

He finished his drink as he reached the intersection of Spruce and Sixth. He spied a trash can and took two steps toward it before he remembered himself and tossed his paper cup onto the sidewalk.

Across the street on his right was a school. To the left, a park—Davenport Park, according to the sign. Telling himself he wasn’t one bit curious about the school, he entered the park.

The playground teemed with rug rats and moms with strollers, plus a few families he pegged as tourists. Seemed to be a lot of tourists on the streets, and in a moment of honesty he could understand why. The weather was great; about a million times better than it was in Atlanta this time of year. The place was pretty to look at, too, and all those activities the sheriff talked about? They sounded like a blast.

It made him think of the times he’d gotten to visit his great-grandmother up in the Great Smoky Mountains.

Just then a little kid let out a yell on the playground, catching TJ’s attention, and he noticed a couple of kids half his age who had haircuts like his. A six-year-old couldn’t shave his own head. That meant his parents had to be in on the style. Really? No way would his dad have let him wear his hair this way.

Isn’t that why you went for the style? To piss him off, since he couldn’t do anything about it?

Thinking about his father depressed him, so he turned and walked away from the playground. Passing an empty baseball diamond, he heard the familiar
thump, thump, thump
of a basketball bouncing on a cement court. He veered toward the sound, rounded some bleachers, and spied a guy near his age shooting baskets by himself.

TJ blurted out the question without thinking about it. “Hey, wanna play horse?”

The guy turned. “Sure.”

Not a guy. A girl. Well, okay. TJ didn’t have anything against girls.

“My name is Mandy West. What’s yours?”

“TJ.”

“You want to warm up first, TJ?”

He shrugged. “Okay.”

She tossed him the ball and started talking. Mandy was thirteen years old, in seventh grade. She had one brother and one sister and her parents were divorced. Her mother called her father a deadbeat dad because he hadn’t sent child support since he moved in with his girlfriend in February. “We’re poor now and Mom has to work more and we don’t get new sneakers for school this year because the ones we have are still okay. I’m mad at my dad for being deadbeat, but I still miss him, you know?”

TJ absolutely did know.

He won the first game of horse, and she challenged him to two out of three. She only stopped talking when they were actually taking their shots. After blabbing about herself, she started asking questions about him. She thought he was a tourist. He didn’t tell her otherwise at first, simply saying that he was from Atlanta and had just arrived in town that day.

“How long are you going to be here?”

After a moment’s pause, he replied, “I’m not sure.”

“Are you staying at a place in town?”

“Yes.” He didn’t elaborate at first, but then he decided it was stupid to put it off. “I’m not exactly a tourist. I’m staying with my aunt for a while.”

“Who is your aunt?”

“Savannah Moore.”

Mandy’s face brightened. “Ms. Moore from Heavenscents?
That’s cool. She’s really nice. She doesn’t mind me coming in just to smell stuff even though I can’t buy anything, and when I wanted to buy my mom something for her birthday from Heavenscents, Ms. Moore gave me a big discount so I could buy a bubble bath bar. Mom loved it.”

Bubble bath? That’s what all that stuff is?
He’d noticed the smell in the shop, but he’d been in a hurry to make his escape, so he hadn’t looked around.

The second game lasted a little longer than the first, mainly because Mandy started talking about kids in the seventh grade and wouldn’t shut up. She told him stories about a dozen people before she finally wound down. After she missed a shot for her
S
, she turned to him and asked, “Can I ask you a question, TJ?”

Could I possibly stop you?

“When you have a ring in your nose, does it hurt to sneeze?”

He couldn’t help it—he started to laugh. It was the first time he’d laughed since his father got arrested.

His laughter died when he heard someone call his name. Zach Turner stood at the edge of the court, his arms folded, his mouth set in a fearsome scowl.

EIGHTEEN
 

After two weeks of “motherhood,” Savannah was ready to pull her hair out. How could one teenage boy create so much havoc? If he was this big a pain at fourteen, imagine how he’d be at sixteen.

Of course, she admitted, she was part of the problem at times. From the first day when she discovered he’d left the house, assumed he’d run away, and called the sheriff’s office for help, to today when, in a hormonal snit, she’d yelled at him for leaving the seat up in the bathroom, she had done her share of making matters worse. She was supposed to be the grown-up in this relationship, but sometimes she’d acted ten years old to his fourteen. Getting her feelings hurt because he didn’t like her ginger cookies was just plain stupid, and so what if the one time she’d seen him engaged and open was while talking about basketball with Gabi Romano? She should be glad for every non-juvenile-delinquent moment she got! Instead, she snapped at him, he stormed out, and then she spent the rest of the day fretting.

The phone rang, and she picked it up without checking caller ID. “Heavenscents.”

“Hello, dear,” Celeste said. “Have I called at a bad time?”

“Not at all. Business has been slow today. I admit it
worries me a little bit. August is supposed to be the height of tourist season.”

“You’ll have days like this going forward. The key is to remember that the sun always rises on a new day.”

That rather cryptic comment caused Savannah a modicum of concern. Why did she think Celeste might be talking about something other than walk-in customers?

She knew, of course, and she couldn’t hold back a sigh as she asked, “What has he done now?”

“TJ is such a troubled boy. My heart truly breaks for him.”

“Celeste, what did he do?”

“He is quite inventive, you realize. Has a bright, creative mind. He simply must learn how to channel all that creativity—without a can of spray paint.”