His Best Friend's Baby (7 page)

“When?”

“Soon. We’ve got to give the guy time. He’s been through a lot and he needs space to be comfortable and get to know us.”

“It’s not like we’re going to get to know each other if I have to stay in the truck all the time.
I’m sixteen, Dad. I’m not a kid,” she grumbled, crossing her arms across her chest.

Really, Dad was getting a little lame in his old age.

“You wanted to come and I told you that was the deal.”

“You and Mom act like he’s crazy—like he’d attack me.” Oh, God, that would get her an A in English for sure. “Do you think he’d attack me?”

“You’ve got more imagination than this whole town put together.” Dad didn’t sound as though that was a good thing.

“Well, the whole town thinks he’s going to kill all of us in our sleep or something.”

“You know that’s not true.”

“Clara at the grocery store said that Jesse had been trying to kill Mitch Adams since they were kids. It just took him a few years to get the job done. But Rita says that’s not true, that it was the other way around.”

“Why are you talking to Clara and Rita about this?”

“Everybody is talking about it. Uncle Jesse coming back is, like, the biggest thing since the football team won conference.”

“What else is everyone saying?”

“That Jesse killed Mitch and three other guys.”

“It was an accident.”

“I also heard that he went to jail for beating a kid up to get his tennis shoes in high school. I heard he beat the kid so bad he had to have total reconstructive surgery. “

“That’s completely exaggerated.”

“I heard he got three girls pregnant.”

Dad finally turned to her, furious. “That’s not true!”

“I’m just telling you what I hear.” Amanda held up her hands like the innocent messenger she was.

“Jesse was a tough kid in high school and he did some things that I’m sure he regrets. But he’s not half as bad as what—”

“Then why can’t I meet him?”

Her father swallowed. She knew what he would say. Something lame about her being too young and Jesse being too unpredictable and how he’d hurt Mom for years and how Dad didn’t want Amanda’s feelings to get hurt.

“He will meet you when he’s ready. When he’s…better. Okay?”

Amanda didn’t want to wait until Jesse was better. She wanted to know him now. She wanted to find out if he really did all those things. If he was as bad as people said he was.

Well, that was part of it.

The other part of it had to do with knowing exactly how it felt to be tired, cold and flea-bitten.

“Amanda?” They were stopped at a light and Dad was staring at her in that old way of his. It had been four years since she ran away, four years since she finally told the truth and Dad still sometimes looked at her as though he didn’t know what she was going to do next.

“I’m serious. Leave Jesse alone until your mom or I say it’s okay. Don’t go over there by yourself.”

“Fine.” She huffed like she was angry with this decision of his.

But Thursday after school, she’d skip cross-country practice and do some investigative journalism.

She turned her head so Dad couldn’t see her grin. What if Jesse did pull a gun on her? She felt giddy with possibility.

This story was going to be awesome!

T
HURSDAY MORNING
, the college application papers were propped up against the plate sitting in what had quickly become “her spot.”

Julia was happy to have a spot. Any spot. At anyone’s table. But those application forms sent a jittery blast of anxiety right through her. She didn’t want to have to disappoint Agnes so soon, but college wasn’t in the cards for her.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Agnes said, standing in the doorway to the kitchen. “I just thought—” She shrugged. “I just want to help.”

She looked so nervous, so unsure of herself, standing there in the sunlight, that Julia smiled to put her at ease. Agnes took that as the invitation she needed.

“You can get your degree in just about anything. Dental hygienist, legal secretary, teacher’s aide. Anything.”

All of those things sounded terrible. Dental
hygienist? Julia would rather go back to waiting tables.

“Look, Agnes, I’m not sure—”

“You don’t have to pick your courses right now. Just fill out the early application form and then you can take your time looking at the pamphlet. That way you can get acceptance out of the way and later talk to some counselors to help you make a decision.”

“But—” This wasn’t what she wanted. Her future was a murky at best, but she knew it didn’t include school. “I know Mitch told you I wanted to get a degree, but I am a terrible student—”

“Well, who isn’t as a kid? Mitch was such a poor student, if it hadn’t been for sports I don’t know that he would have even graduated.”

“Up!” Instinctively Julia bent in answer to her son’s cry, but he wasn’t standing in front of her with his arms up demanding to be held. He stood in front of Agnes.

“Up, Nana.”

“Well, good morning, little boy,” Agnes cooed and lifted the heavy baby into her arms. “Are you hungry?” she asked and when Ben nodded, she smiled. “Of course you are. Let’s go see what Nana’s got to eat.” Ben patted Agnes’s face.

“Morning, Nana,” he said and Agnes turned to kiss his hand. Ben’s hair stood up in an airy blond cloud and his grandmother slowly patted it down, stroking his head and face as she did it.

Finally she turned to Julia. “Just fill out the application. You still have plenty of time to make the decision. It would mean a lot to us to be able to help you get your degree.”

Julia nodded, words deserting her.

What would it hurt?
she thought and tried to swallow the sickly sweet taste of gratitude and obligation from the back of her throat. She’d come to New Springs to give Ben a family and for the love that Agnes gave Ben, so Julia would fill out a million applications.

She uncapped the pen that had been left beside the papers and sat to fill out the paperwork for another dream that wasn’t hers.

A
FTER A BREAKFAST
of yogurt and fruit, Julia loaded her son into the old stroller. He had to practically kiss his knees to sit in it he was so big, but she didn’t have the money for a new one, yet. She prayed the screws, worn out wheels and cheap fabric would hold out just a little bit more.

“You gonna do some sight-seeing?” Ron
asked, lowering the newspaper from in front of his face. The envelope with her completed application stuck out of his shirt pocket. He’d insisted on delivering it himself, as if it would change the inevitable outcome. Even if accepted, she had little intention of attending. But she’d cross that bridge when she got to it.

“I’m going to look for a job.”

“What?” Agnes asked, her voice and eyes sharp. “Why?”

Julia was taken aback by Agnes’s sudden tone.

“You’ve been so generous, but Ben and I have to make some effort to be independent.” She tried to make it a joke but Ron and Agnes didn’t laugh. “I’d feel better if I was working at least part-time. Saving up some money so we could get our own place.”

“Why?” Agnes asked. “Why do you want to leave?” Clearly the woman took this personally, something Julia had not expected at all. She’d expected some halfhearted protestations and reassurances that they were welcome to stay as long as they liked, but the deeply wounded look on Agnes’s weathered face surprised the heck out of her.

“It’s not that I want to leave—”

“Then why do it? You and Ben can stay here. We’re happy to help you out in any way. Besides with you going to school what would be the point?”

Julia looked between the two, but they shared the same stern expression. It was as if her not wanting to be a burden was an insult to them, as if she were throwing their hospitality in their face. She hadn’t anticipated the costs of being a family with the Adamses.

Julia sighed, defeated by their questions and their expectations.

God, you’re spineless
, Mitch’s voice chimed in.

“We’re just going to go check things out. I need to get some kind of job, I can’t live off your goodwill forever. We should contribute something to the household.”

The older couple looked at each other in silence and Julia felt as if she’d been tricked. What happened to the happy welcoming people she’d met a few days ago?

It’s my life, she thought with a surge of rebellion. She had every right to want her independence.

“Well, at least you’ve got good daycare,” Ron finally said with a wink.

Julia heaved a sigh of relief, unsure of what she’d have done if they’d continued to object.

Ben waved goodbye and she maneuvered the stroller out the door and down the slate path to the sidewalk. She took the long way, down two blocks, deliberately walking past Jesse’s house. It looked even prettier in the sunlight. The red geraniums bobbed in the breeze like rubied sock puppets. The ladder still leaned against the house and her eyes, despite her best intentions, searched for Jesse.

He was on the roof, his back to her, naked under the sun. Jeans clung to lean hips as he stood from his crouch, his long, tough body unfurling so he could toss an armful of shingles into the side yard. He tugged on the wrists of his gloves and twisted at the waist as if getting rid of a kink.

He shouldn’t be working so hard so soon
.

The sunshine and sweat of his labor made the red color of his scars against his pale skin even more alarming. More shocking. He was all bone and muscle and scar tissue. But even the crooked collarbone and the ribs that pushed at his skin didn’t detract from his breathtaking beauty.

His arms, belly and back still rippled with
muscles, exuding the sort of power that seemed only slightly diminished from when she’d seen him in Germany.

His black hair had gone shaggy over the months in the hospital and now covered his ears and flirted with his eyes. He brushed it out of the way, looking right at her in the process. His dark eyes cut through her like a flashlight in a dark room. She felt like a thief, caught touching something forbidden.

His eyes didn’t move, they stayed locked on her and everything in her started a slow burn. Blood pooled between her legs, in flesh so forgotten it hurt. Her skin ignited under his hot gaze, her mouth fell open, suddenly parched for air. Dying for something she didn’t have. This was the connection she’d been missing; this is what it was supposed to be between men and women. Surely, Jesse hadn’t meant it when he told her to stay away. How could he deny—Just as she was about to step forward, get closer to him, Jesse bent down to his work.

He tore up shingles as though she weren’t even there.

“Mama?” Ben asked. “Let’s walk.”

The blood rushed from her breasts to her face.

“Right, Ben. Let’s get walking.”

She jerked Ben’s stroller and stalked away from Jesse Filmore as if the hounds of hell were after her.

J
ESSE HAD TO GET OFF
the roof; his hands shook so much it wasn’t safe. As soon as he was sure she was long gone, he climbed down the ladder and went inside.

Jesus, that woman had the power to kill him. He went to the sink, tore off his gloves and splashed cold water over his face, sluicing it down his chest and over his back, trying to cool his damn body.

He had to get out of town. If he could keep going with the roof at this rate he might be able to get it done in a week—two at the most.

He nearly groaned. Two weeks of pretending she wasn’t a hundred meters away? He shook his head, spraying the room with water droplets. He had to find a real estate agent. And screw him doing the roof on his own, he needed professionals. Guys who could get it done in a few days.

He went into the living room to the small telephone table where for years the yellow pages had sat collecting dust. But, of course, the table was bare. He banged his way through
the cupboards under the TV stand and the end table, but they were all bare, too.

“Damnit!”

“Uncle Jesse?”

Everything in him went cold. Then hot. He turned to the doorway to see the blond teenager who had stared at him through the hole in the picture window.

“I’m not your uncle,” he said. Stupidly, faced with Amanda’s brilliant blue eyes, that’s the best he could come up with.
You’re really
doing a great job here, handling all these
women. She’s, like, sixteen—surely you can
scare her away
.

“Well, not by blood. But marriage counts.” She shrugged her thin shoulder and the sun hit the fall of white-blond hair along her narrow face.

“Can I come in?” she asked, with a half grin.

Man, she looks like Mac
.

“Will you leave if I say no?”

She pretended to think it over and finally shook her head, that grin turning into a beatific smile. “Probably not.”

“What do you want?” he asked.

“My final project for English class is due in a few weeks and I was hoping…” She poked her pinky finger through the metal spiral at the
end of the notebook she held in her hand. “I was hoping I could interview you.”

“No.” He walked away from the window toward the kitchen, hoping she’d get the hint, but worried that the glint in her eye suggested she didn’t take no for an answer.

“You shouldn’t leave your door unlocked,” she said as she walked in. “Anyone could just come in.”

“I’m serious, kid—”

“Amanda.” Her chin came up like a boxer going into the ring and those eyes of hers, God, were they familiar. It wasn’t just their likeness to Mac’s; it was also the knowledge in their blue depths. She looked like his soldiers had after their first missions into Kabul. A surprising steadiness lived in her eyes, a fearlessness that told him she’d seen everything that could possibly scare her and lived through it.

Mac said something had happened to her four years ago. Something bad.

It made him sick thinking about whatever she’d seen to give her that terrible adult knowledge. One of his barricades, which stood so tall around any emotion he might feel or share, trembled.

“My name is Amanda. I’m your niece. I wrote you a hundred and four letters last year and I sent you two pictures and fourteen bags of gummy worms because Mom said that’s what you used to like best.” She stood, all elbows and knees, but he could already see the promise in her—she was going to be a knockout. A loudmouthed knockout.

“For all that work you sent me one letter. One dumb letter about cheerleading.”

“Not much of a writer,” he mumbled and dug into the refrigerator for something to do since it didn’t seem as if the kid was going anywhere. Could he kick her out? Physically grab her and throw her out the door? Probably not. Mac would come down off his mountain like a nightmare if Jesse did.

“So can I interview you?” she asked, practically bouncing on her toes. “I want to be a journalist so this would be, like, the best—”

“No interviews,” he interrupted. He’d given one statement to the press after the accident:
All
of his soldiers acted with valor and courage. It
was an honor to serve alongside of them
. That was all anyone needed to know.

Amanda’s face fell and, for some reason, that disappointment pricked him like a knife.

“Mom said you could be stubborn,” she muttered.

“Mom?” He’d thought Amanda’s mother had died—that Rachel had married Mac.

“Your sister. Rachel. She’s my mom.”

Jesse whistled through his teeth in surprise and Amanda’s blue eyes turned stormy. “Don’t be mean about Rachel, she’s awesome.”

Jesse shrugged, not about to burst that particular bubble. Amanda just stared at him with that strange forthright manner.

What the hell am I supposed to do with a
teenager who’s broken in and refuses to leave?

“Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”

“We got out early,” she told him. “Teachers’ conference.”

He remembered the thrill of half days, leaving school with most of the day ahead of him for whatever he and Mitch wanted. It would never have occurred to him to work on an English paper.

“You want something to eat?” he finally asked.

“Do you actually have food in there?” She tried to peer around the open fridge door.

“Here.” He took out one of the many plastic containers Mac had included with the groceries the day before.

“You didn’t even try one of those?” she asked, taking one of the peanut butter cookies. “These took me, like, all Saturday afternoon to make.”

She was already pissed off at him and he’d just met her. “I didn’t ask you to,” he told her, his hackles raising.

“That makes it nicer,” she said slowly, as though he might be stupid. “Makes it a gift.”

He couldn’t help it, didn’t even know he was about to do it until the laugh had clawed its way out of his ruined throat. It was one bad-sounding laugh, like a rusty door slamming, and it hurt like hell but he couldn’t stop.

“You’ve spent too much time with my sister,” he told the girl and watched her smile.

“There are worse things,” she said. He could feel their shared knowledge of those
worse
things
fill the room.

The girl had ghosts. Must be the only reason he hadn’t gotten rid of her yet.

“So, you want to tell me about the war?”

“You want to tell me what happened to you four years ago?”