Page 14

Chapter 12

I n the safe, dry cab of his truck, Jamie told me he’d been on his way home from a night of inventorying a shipment from Vermont when he thought he saw movement in our woods. I said I’d been on a walk but lost my way, and explanations made, we fell into an awkward silence.

“Should I run you home?” he asked.

Did he have an inkling that Peter and I had been fighting? Was he angling to spend a few minutes alone with me? Regardless of why he’d asked, I was grateful.

“Not yet, if you don’t mind.” I wasn’t ready to face Peter—or, if he’d gone to bed, the quiet of our house. Now that I was out of the woods, I realized I must be at the head-hanging, muttering, bone-tired stage of drunk, and wanted some time to clear my head.

Jamie offered me a sip from the aluminum water bottle in the cup holder, and I gulped down what was left of his water. The truck smelled good—like spicy cologne and wool blankets. A little doggy, too. I asked if he’d take me to the restaurant. I would wash my hands, use a proper bathroom, and change into the spare set of sweats I kept there. Make a pot of coffee, get some carbs inside me, and sober up. He said that was fine and executed a U-turn, heading back toward town.

He parked in front of his shop and, since I didn’t have my key, let us into the restaurant through the connecting door. I started a pot of coffee, and while he settled himself at the bar, I went to the bathroom to wash up. When I came out, he was back in the kitchen, standing over the stove, stirring eggs.

“It may not be a Billie-caliber omelet, but it’ll do. Sit. I poured your coffee already.”

Another warm rush of gratitude surged through me. The guy seemed to always intuit what I needed. I did as he instructed and a few moments later, he put a plate in front of me. The eggs were fluffy and buttery, the slice of sourdough he’d toasted and slathered with blackberry jam, perfection. I inhaled it all as he cleaned up. When I was finished, he sat beside me, a mug of coffee in his hand.

“Want to talk about it?” he asked.

I sighed. “Peter and I fought. It was dumb. I was walking it off and fell down the bluff. I’m not really the outdoorsy type.”

“You don’t say.” He smiled.

I smiled back, feeling warm, feeling full, and with that, feeling my defenses slip. I had left out the part about Peter throwing a glass. Was I protecting him?

“My mother joined a cult,” I said abruptly.

His eyebrows shot up. “Excuse me?”

I bent over what was left of my food. “At the beginning of the pandemic. I’d bought her a house in Jersey, but I think she was lonely. She really got into tracing her ancestry.”

“No kidding.”

I shrugged, chewing. “It seemed harmless enough at first. Just the monthly subscription to the website. But a few days into the lockdown, she calls me and says that she’s not going to be stuck out in New Jersey so she’s sold her house, the house I bought her, mind you, and is moving to Maine. Apparently, there was a whole group of them, descendants of this religious sect who found each other through the website, and they decided to revive the old cult or commune or whatever it was up in this godforsaken patch of land they used to own.”

“Whoa.”

I nodded. “She lives there now. My mother—the same woman who actually cried the day I told her she didn’t have to work at her shitty job anymore, that I was paying all her bills—voluntarily handed over her phone and works in a vegetable garden all day.” I laughed, a caustic, hollow-sounding thing.

“Did you ask her not to go?”

“Not in so many words. My mom doesn’t really do direct, clear communication. Or difficult emotions. After my father died, she woke up the next morning and kept going like nothing had happened.”

“I might be able to relate somewhat. My father’s a bit on the stoic side.”

I sighed. “It’s just hard to wrap my head around. That she’s gone.”

“Maybe not for good. So maybe she couldn’t talk about it, but it sounds like she was searching, like you were, before you came to Juliana.”

Our eyes caught and held. “Maybe.” I looked away. “The thing was, I had already lost the restaurant. Losing my mom on top of that just felt like a cruel joke. My family never could afford to go out to eat, so Mom really loved eating in nice restaurants. Especially when someone else was paying. I actually opened my first place for her, in a way. And probably this one, too, if I’m being honest.” There it was, all wrapped up in a few sentences. The one truth I couldn’t bring myself to admit to Peter.

“I hope she sees it,” Jamie said.

“She won’t.”

“That’s really tough.” He was looking at me with clear eyes and an open expression. “What did Peter say?”

I looked away. “It was a hard time for him, too. He had a lot of clients losing family members. Losing jobs. Their health. It felt selfish to whine about my mom. About losing Billie’s and feeling like a failure.”

He looked incredulous. “You’re kidding me. You, a failure? You understand the pandemic killed Brooks Brothers and Chuck E. Cheese, right?”

“I know.”

“Tell me how it happened.”

I took a deep breath, thinking back to those terrible days. “Every day, our numbers were lower. I was going to have to furlough most of the staff and cut the hours for the ones who stayed on. I had to find a third-party delivery system. There was talk of small business payments, but I knew it would be barely enough to cover our rent.” I rubbed my arms. “So I decided to cut the cord. I told all my employees to apply for unemployment, took my tax money out of my savings account, and gave them their last paycheck, and then”—I fluttered my fingers—“the place became nothing but a memory.”

“Shit.”

“We had our last supper. All the staff were there. So many friends ordered for takeout, many of them from halfway across the country. Family, friends, former employees—it was beautiful. At the end of the night, we were all half-drunk when we heard the mayor order the lockdown on the news. So, after everybody left, that’s what I did. I locked the place down. I put an ad to sell the equipment online, but my general manager handled the sale. I couldn’t bring myself to go back. To see the place . . . my place . . .” I covered my mouth with my hand, as if to stop myself from saying more. I really didn’t want to cry here, not in front of Jamie.

“And you didn’t talk to Peter because you assumed the last thing he needed was a wife who couldn’t hold down the fort.”

I shrugged.

“What about what you needed?”

His gaze was steady, penetrating, and I had the sudden, acute impulse to let everything out. To share the fear and disappointment that had tinged every minute of the past two years of my life. The suffocating feeling of loss and grief. The fear that my marriage wasn’t going through a rough patch because we’d moved or because Peter was fighting some kind of unknown illness, but because, at the heart of it, I was still just a lonely, needy child who desperately wanted her mother’s love. A child who irrationally believed a restaurant could somehow magically bring her mother back to her.

“What I need isn’t going to happen,” I said simply.

“But you can’t honestly believe you’re a failure.” His eyes were warm, trained on me with an intensity that made my stomach twist pleasantly. “You’re still standing. Still making things happen. You’re a survivor. Maybe Peter can’t handle that.”

I let my eyes slide away from Jamie’s warm greenish-blue ones, as if he could read my thoughts even as they flickered through my brain.

“You’re a lifesaver, too, Billie, if you want to know the truth.”

I knit my brows and his eyes dropped to my lips. Then he glanced down at his coffee. I was quiet. It felt like we’d just stumbled over some line, crossing over into some territory that felt taboo.

I looked down at my mug. “It’s the coffee,” I said lightly. “That is a real shitty brew you guys have had to make do with over at Pig Out’s. Your standard is incredibly low.”

His face held the serious expression, his eyes on me. “It’s not the coffee. It’s you, Billie. You’re the lifesaver.”

I didn’t look up. My chest felt tight.

“I know I shouldn’t say that. I don’t have any right. But it’s there, it’s real, and I can’t deny it.”

I could barely focus over the thundering of my heart. I met his gaze. “What’s there?”

“Come on. You know. How I feel about you.”

His hand moved to mine, removing it from the mug and turning it palm-up on the bar. He traced a finger from my wrist across the palm, down my center finger. I was sweating, thoughts swirling like a tornado in my head. When he finally spoke, his words sounded like he’d rehearsed them. Like he’d known this moment would come and had prepared for it.

“I really enjoy Alice Tilton. I think she’s a great person, but I’m never going to fall in love with her. I know that you love your husband, that y’all have a beautiful, smart daughter and something real and solid, that you’ve built over the years. But I also know some other things.”

I held my breath.

His finger moved over the lines of my palm. “I know that I want to see you every day. To see your face, talk to you, laugh with you. Hear every single thought you have. So, what does it all mean?” He shook his head. “I don’t know, but I can tell you this. I’m tired of trying to figure it out. I just want to say it out loud and let it be whatever it is.”

He leaned closer to me, so close that I could smell the coffee on his breath. His green-blue eyes twinkled. “I’m not trying to get you to sleep with me, Billie. I swear.”

I gave him a small smile. “God, I’d hate to see you really try.”

He sat back and laughed. I smiled, feeling some of the tension dissipate.

“But sex isn’t just about the end result,” he said.

I flushed, my throat constricting and my mouth going dry.

“It’s about everything leading up to it.” He gently brushed my hair off my shoulder. “Getting to know the feel of someone’s hair.” He ran a finger along my jaw. “The line of their face.” The finger moved under my chin, then down. “The way their neck curves right into this place.” He stopped it right at the hollow between my clavicle bones and lifted my hand, lacing our fingers. “Holding hands is vastly underrated as foreplay.”

I looked down at our joined hands. His was trembling the slightest bit.

“See, I’m nervous,” he said. “It’s so intimate. Palm to palm. Fingers separating fingers, opening up to each other, entering then fitting together.” His thumb rubbed right below mine. My body was inclined toward his. I suddenly realized that even though all the businesses in downtown Juliana were closed for the night, it wasn’t all that late. There could still be the random pedestrian out for a stroll around the town square.

I extricated my hand from his. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”

He sat back. “No apology necessary. Your hand is not mine to hold.”

I brushed my hands together, maybe trying to wipe off the feel of him. I avoided his gaze. “Help me with these dishes?”

We cleaned up, turned off the lights, and I reset the alarm. We left the way we’d come, through the door to Cleburne Antiques. Soft music played on invisible speakers. “So Into You” by the Atlanta Rhythm Section. Had Jamie put on the music when we came in? No. He probably left it running around the clock.

The old wardrobes, dining tables, and dressers gleamed. Shadows wrapped around every nook of the place. On the long counter a lone Tiffany lamp sent out a warm light, bathing the store in a soft glow, making it look like a magical emporium that offered spells and charms instead of old furniture. For the first time, I noticed the paintings hung on every wall. Austere portraits of aristocratic-looking men and women. A few landscapes and still lifes. A handful of nudes.

Jamie looped back between the furniture. “Just give me a minute. I need to grab a couple of files in the office.”

“Sure.” I watched him go, fidgeting with the hem of my shirt. At this point, the more distance between us the better. Where I stood, I could see boxes of old vinyl, prints, engravings, dusty letters. I moved closer to one, peering inside. On the top of a stack of papers, a photograph caught my eye. I picked it up. It was one of those old tintypes of my house, the Dalzell-Davenport house, with the old doctor, Silas Dalzell, trim in a dark suit, standing in the front yard. Behind that picture was another, this one with a dour-looking woman with her hair slicked back and wearing a black dress with a white lace collar. Mrs. Dalzell, I presumed.

More pictures of the house were behind it, featuring families I didn’t recognize. Dalzells and Minettes, no doubt. But there were also newer pictures, definitely ones that George Davenport had taken. And there were some old gas and electric bills. I didn’t understand what they were doing here in a dusty corner of Jamie’s shop. Lilah had said that George Davenport’s family had left some of his things behind when they moved him out. Maybe Jamie had been in charge of collecting these before we moved in.

I rifled toward the bottom of the box and pulled out two more pictures, both old, badly faded, and damaged by mold. One showed three mustachioed soldiers in uniform, sitting in front of a tent, legs crossed, around a table. There was a meal laid out before them. From the tent pole hung an American flag. Confederate soldiers, I guessed.

The other photograph showed a group of solemn women and children standing in front of a clapboard building. None were smiling. I moved closer to get a better look. One of the children, a scrawny boy in the front and center of the group. He held a small sign. I leaned closer, trying to make out the words printed on it.

NOVEMBER 11, 1864 .

And that’s when I saw her. In the back row, the old woman with a lean, drawn face and large, plain cross hanging on a chain around her thin neck. Her head was wreathed with a crown of braids. Her dark eyes, like two pieces of glittering jet, stared into the camera.

Stared at me.

I felt the slightest whisper of a breeze on my neck. Goose bumps rose and I shuddered, and I heard my mother’s voice. Someone walking over your grave . . .

I flipped the photo over, catching a glimpse of faded, spidery handwriting. It was in pencil, almost indiscernible in the dim light. A woman’s name and UGA . I held the picture closer, just as Jamie’s hand grazed up my arm. I dropped the photo back in the box, and in one smooth motion, he turned me to face him. His eyes were burning.

“Billie.” His voice sounded like a plea. “I’m sorry. You may not want to talk about it, but I have to know.”

I could feel heat radiating off his body, enveloping me. His breath coming fast and hot. He hadn’t seen me with the pictures. Something else was happening here. Something that was making my pulse race, too.

My heart beat hard, in time with his breath. “What?”

He tilted his head, studying me. “Did Peter get physical with you tonight? When you fought?”

I was quiet.

“You can tell me,” he said.

“He threw a glass. Not at me . . . I don’t think. But still, it scared me.”

“God. Billie. Of course it did.” He sounded angry. Frustrated. Like he wanted to do something to defend me but knew he couldn’t. “You don’t have to talk about it.”

But I wanted to. I needed to. “I don’t know who he is anymore. I don’t know anything.”

He touched my cheek and I flinched. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s okay.”

But it wasn’t. He was still touching me. His hand was at my rib cage now, moving up, slowly, tentatively feeling my body. My stomach leapt and, to my dismay, I felt myself go wet between my legs. In one corner of my mind, the one small rational sliver of brain that still made good decisions, I knew this was just my body responding to the touch of a man I happened to find attractive. It was just a physiological response to the drive built into me. But the desire was overwhelming. Sharp and sweet and magnetic, in a way that felt irresistible.

Oh God, Billie, not this . . .

This isn’t what you want . . .

“You don’t have to say anything.” He rubbed his cheek against mine, slowly, gently, over and over, first one side, then the other. I closed my eyes and tilted my face up, letting out a sound that was somewhere between a gasp and a moan.

His beard was soft, softer than I’d expected, and I felt myself being lulled into a kind of trance. Being pulled down, down, down to a dark place. A hidden place. And then his lips found mine and I let them be found, kissing him back, inhaling the scent of him and forgetting all about the pictures in the box behind me.