Vampire Blood (5 page)

Her father shifted in his seat.

“That’s it. I give up.” Her hand cut the warm air like a knife. “If she wants to talk to or see me, she’ll have to make the next move. I can’t stand what she’s become. I won’t accept it.” The bitterness crept into her voice, and she couldn’t stop it. Then she couldn’t talk at all for a few moments.

The silence was unbearable.

“I love her.” Looking away from him, she choked it out. “How can she treat me like that? I’ve never done anything to hurt her.”

“In a way, you did.” The words startled Jenny, as her father turned to her, his eyes hooded. “She thinks, in a way, you’re following the same path she did ... giving up all your dreams. Giving up. You could have been somebody, Jenny. You were somebody. You’ve thrown it all away. For what?”

Jenny’s face was hard now. She knew he didn’t really want an answer from her, merely a reaction, and he’d gotten that all right.

“Your mom avoids you because—”

Jenny covered her ears, not wanting to hear, but her father reached over with one hand as he was driving and pulled her hands away. “She sees a mirror image of herself when she looks at you, so don’t blame her that she can’t stand the sight of you.”

Jenny felt sick. Having her usually obtuse father point out the obvious (what she had tried so hard to escape all these years) was like having a sparrow metamorphose into a viper in her hands as she petted it.

Her father pulled up in front of the Albers’ house and shut off the car. It shuddered and shook like a sick puppy for a couple of seconds, before it settled itself into quiet.

“I’m sorry, Jenny,” he mumbled, unable to meet her eyes again. “I should never have talked to you like that. I had no right.”

He lowered his head. “It’s easier, at times, to try to blame other people for your mother’s destructive behavior, than it is to accept the truth.” He sighed heavily.

“It’s your life. Just like it’s her life. What there is of it.” He pressed his lips into a tight slash, and squinted into the sun.

“Your mother’s not in her right mind now, but she was a darn good mother to you and the boys, wasn’t she?” he reminisced. “A good wife to me for so many years.” He turned eyes to her so full of yearning that it nearly made her want to cry.

“One of these days, if we don’t abandon her and keep loving her, she’ll come to her senses. I know she will.”

Jenny wondered if he were speaking only of her mother.

“So I go over there and make sure she has enough to eat and that her bills are paid? Big deal. I’ve always looked after her, you see, and that’s a habit hard to break.” His voice was full of the old optimism she’d come to rely on so completely and had never fully understood she did until now. It was a tiny revelation.

“I’ll always love her, Jenny. Like I love you, Tommy and Joey. Can’t ever turn that off.”

Like I’ll always love you, Dad,
she thought,
no matter what.

“Ah, Dad.” Jenny squeezed his hand. “It’s okay.” She couldn’t stand to hurt him. There was enough hurt in his life.

She gave him a brief but sincere hug, her previous annoyance humbled.

“We’d better get going on that house.” She grinned at him, gathering bags and paintbrushes from the back seat.

She jumped out of the car and hiked towards the large, rambling house in front of them, checking over her shoulder to be sure he was behind her.

As always, he was.

Chapter Three

August 15

They didn’t disturb Maude and George Albers, old friends of her parents since their high school days, because it was so early. The day before they’d brought out their supplies, ladders, scaffolding, walk boards, paint, scrapers and drop cloths, so they simply started on the side where the bedrooms weren’t located.

Also, yesterday George had given her dad instructions on what he’d wanted done: paint the whole house, trim included, and the elaborate gazebo in the back. Because of George’s heart attack seven years ago, the house hadn’t been painted in at least that long, and the couple couldn’t afford siding for it.

They started scraping the old paint off the dingy white two-story Victorian house. Repainting it would be a real challenge. Dormers laced its top story, and lattice work surrounded a long rambling wraparound porch on the bottom level, complete with an old-fashioned porch swing.

It was a beautiful house with a spacious lawn dotted with cookie-cut shrubs, fragrant lilac bushes and towering shady oaks.

Jenny had always thought the gazebo lovely. When she’d been a child, it’d been fun to scamper across the field that separated the Albers’ house from the farmhouse through the dark night and sneak into the gazebo to be alone and think. Her own private little house.

Jenny gazed around her at the lovely, well-kept grounds. Maude tended it well. When Jenny was little, she used to walk by their house with her two brothers on the way to and from school and dream it belonged to her family, not the Albers. That she and her brothers lived there instead of in their run-down farmhouse across the field. That she’d really been their daughter, not Ernest and Estelle’s.

She hadn’t been jealous of Maude and George, because they had always treated her and her brothers like the children they’d never had.

She recalled wistfully the summer afternoons spent helping Maude weed her garden, or her flower beds, or spent eating homemade ice cream on their front porch on a warm summer’s evening or discussing the newspaper business and the glittering world of writers.

In fact, listening to Maude talk about her job at the town’s newspaper was what had inspired Jenny, as a teenager, to begin writing in the first place.

She’d soaked up the stories raptly from Maude and then George, who had been a detective for a local insurance company and had filed all the snippets of their escapades away for future use.

They’d been the perfect couple. Everyone had adored them, so in love, so gentle with each other, so generous with everyone. They had never fought. Jenny couldn’t recall one single incident where they had even raised voices at each other—unlike her parents who had fought all the time, or so it’d seemed to a sensitive Jenny.

Now Maude and George were comfortably retired on fat pensions and interest-earning CDs. Another accomplishment that her mother and father would never achieve.

Jenny scrutinized her father (at his age) sweating and groaning in the heat up above her and felt again that old guilt. For some reason, she blamed herself for this, too.

If she would have made a better success of her muddled life, had more money, he wouldn’t be up there in the heat working so hard on someone else’s house, or living in a dilapidated old farmhouse.

Life could be so unfair at times. She shook her head and wiped the beaded moisture off her cheeks and brow.

Things are the way they are, and no one can change what is.
Mom used to say that to her when she was a child. She’d been right. Wishing didn’t get you anything. Things are what they are, so accept them or change them. Just shut up about it. It’ll drive you crazy if you don’t.

She sensed her father wanted her to move back home with him, even though she lived only a few acres away on the edge of his land. She knew he’d love it if she packed up and came home.

She couldn’t do it. All her life she’d lived with either parents or a husband. She’d never lived alone, totally on her own, and right now at this point of her life she felt as if she needed it. Desperately. To experience only having to be responsible for herself, only have to care for herself. She had to know what it was like, see if she could do it.

Once she would have killed to be alone. She finally had it and didn’t know what the hell to do with it.

The truth? She was lonely, too. Lonely, yet stubborn. She ached to be stronger than the sniveling Jenny that had been walked out on by her first husband; stronger than the childish woman who’d stayed ten years too long with someone she hadn’t loved.

It was time, wasn’t it?

Walking out on Benjamin had been the bravest thing she’d ever done. Now she was determined to find out who Jenny Lacey really was.

It was past time.

After a while, Jenny tied her hair off her neck with a rubber band, making a mental note to wear shorts on Monday. Whatever had possessed her to wear blue jeans on a day like this was beyond her.

The hours passed, the heat sizzling around them as they worked. Jenny felt like a steak on a grill.

The good thing about manual labor was that it gave her time to think, and she’d done a lot of that since coming to work with her father a few months ago. She could see why people liked this kind of labor. Remembering those times when you were happy, sorting out the bad times, was like therapy.

Her dad moved the scaffolding and walk board up next to the house and began painting higher on the wall.

Jenny hated it when he climbed the ladders or worked up high on the walkways. The last couple days there were times—she’d catch them out of the corners of her eyes— when he’d strain to climb the rungs, huffing and puffing, sloppy on the walk boards, unsteady on his feet. If the wind was cruising faster than usual around the corners, he’d flutter in the breeze like a flag.

It was getting worse.

Last week he’d fallen to his knees on the walk board after he’d been slammed against the house they were putting gutters on. His hands had waved around him like he’d been trying to fly, searching desperately for a handhold, a niche, so he wouldn’t fall. He’d been balancing like a man on the high wire.

It had scared the living daylights out of her.

That was half the reason she’d decided to keep working with him. To keep him from killing himself.

How could she tell Joey
that?

The worst crime she could commit was undercutting her dad’s abilities to his son; he’d never forgive her, so she had to remain silent and protect her dad the best, the only way she knew how.

It didn’t make it any easier that most of the houses they worked on recently were two or three story jobs. Her dad always insisted on doing the most dangerous work himself because he was so afraid she’d fall or hurt herself if he allowed her to do it. As if she were made of spun glass or something.

It was ironic really, because working like this had strengthened her flabby muscles and put her in better shape than she’d been in years. She’d dropped that extra weight she’d added over the years and was feeling better than she ever had.

It was he who was an accident waiting to happen, not she, but she couldn’t tell him that.

She stole a sidelong glance at him, and he was standing there looking befuddled, bone-weary, and the day had only begun.

What was the matter with him?

Maybe he was thinking about his dilemma with mom, or worrying about unpaid bills? Or maybe he was just plain sick.

Jenny went back to her work with a vengeance, her mind on trying to figure out what she could do about the situation.

A little past noon, Maude poked her head out the rear door close to where they were working.

“You two come on in and rest a spell from the heat and have some lunch. You’ve been working like slaves out here all morning, and I don’t want you getting sick on me before the house is done,” she joked.

“Besides, Jenny, I want to talk to you about something.”

“Be right in, Maude,” she yelled over her shoulder, putting the scraper down, and wiping her sweaty face with the rag she had hanging from her waist.

“You coming in, Dad?” Jenny asked as she paused below the walkway, staring up, her hand shading her eyes from the glaring sun. “You look like you need a rest.”

He looked dreadful to Jenny, and she was worried. He was weaving on the walk board, breathing like a hard-run horse.

“In just a minute, honey,” he promised, not taking his eyes off the section he was scraping. “I want to get this part done, and then I’ll be in. Go ahead, I’ll be right behind ya.”

“Dad? Please take a break. Come in. Now.”

“Jenny, I’ll come in when I’m ready,” he huffed. “I’m a grown man, don’t nag me. You’re not your mother.”

That stung so much she let it drop, and against her better judgment, she went into the house.

It was cool inside, as it always was, even on such a scorching day. Quiet. Maude was at the kitchen table reading the newspaper. The sun shone cheerily through lace curtains, throwing delicate, golden-filigreed patterns over the kitchen walls.

The kitchen was the beautiful old-fashioned kind with high ceilings and wood trim everywhere. Oak cabinets, polished to a high shine and smelling of lemon furniture polish, lined two walls. Soft carpeting in shades of brown sponged under her feet. Fresh flowers had been placed in the center of the large lace-covered table. Two large trailing ivy plants hung from macramé hangers in the corners.

On the cherry wood table sat three plates with fat sandwiches on them and next to them tall glasses of lemonade. Jenny plopped down gratefully across from Maude.

Unlike Jenny’s own mother, Maude was still an attractive woman for her age, with sharp blue eyes and short wavy white hair she had permed regularly. Today she wore a soft flowered summer dress, and the blue in the pattern matched her eyes. She never wore makeup; she didn’t need to, she had lovely skin.