Better Than This: A Nine Minutes Spin-Off Novel

by Beth Flynn

  “My grandmother!” I screamed. “That witch!!”

  I clenched my fists at my sides and tried to take a calming breath as I filled Darlene and Jake in on a detail from the summer of ’79 that I’d long forgotten. As a child, it had always been my job to retrieve the mail, which entailed a mile-and-a-half walk from our house to where our dirt road intersected with the main street. It wasn’t bad on school days because that’s where the bus dropped us. But during the summer it was a chore I didn’t appreciate. Especially after my grandmother entered some stupid recipe contest from one of her magazines. While she was waiting to see if her recipe had been selected there were days she made me run down to the mailbox more than once. One day in particular, she’d taken the car to go into town and got the mail on her way home. It was something she normally wouldn’t have done, but she was waiting for good news. I remembered the day clearly. She came in the house with a bundle of mail clutched in her hand and said I’d been relieved of mail duty. She sternly informed me that she’d received notice on a late bill that she never got. She blamed me and said I must’ve dropped it on the way home. I was never to check the mail again.

  I looked over at Darlene whose eyes were wide as recognition seeped in. “You got a letter from Kenny and it had the lousy luck to be on a day when she picked up the mail because she wanted to hear from Good Housekeeping!”

  “I’d bet my right arm that’s exactly what happened. She never let me check the mail again. She always made it a point to drive up and get it before we got off the bus. She never even waited around to give us a ride back.”

  “Your grandmother was a tool,” was Jake’s only comment.

  Darlene’s eyes were brimming with unshed tears. “That would explain so much, Barbie. You told me how Kenny never responded to the couple of letters you sent him while he was in prison. Did you ever ask him in those letters why he ran off and never returned your granddaddy’s pocket watch?”

  I stared at the ground in concentration and gave my head a slow shake. “No. I don’t think I ever confronted him about leaving and not telling me why. It was pride on my part. I didn’t want him to know how much he’d hurt me. I made the letters very casual because I didn’t want him to know I cared. I wrote about nonsense stuff like I was just an old friend trying to catch up. Not like I was the girl whose heart he’d shattered.”

  “So he never knew you didn’t find the lunchbox filled with treasure,” she surmised. “Or his note.”

  Like two lovers tightly woven into each other’s arms, my anger and grief melded together and formed an animalistic fury like I’d never experienced. I grabbed the thermos from the coffee table and threw it with all my might against the brick fireplace. The hard plastic cracked, scattering pieces on the hearth and across the floor. I picked up a fireplace poker and brought it down hard against the metal lunchbox. The years of Juanita Anderson’s abuse had caused me to finally reach a breaking point. The healer, the doctor had suddenly become the destroyer. And a child’s lunchbox had become the hapless victim. I felt Jake and Darlene watching me, both stunned into silence as I took out my pent-up rage on an inanimate object. When the damage was done, I stood back and felt my breathing and heartbeat returning to normal. I tossed the poker on the hearth where it echoed with a resounding metallic ping. “That was for letting Kenny Pritchard die in prison thinking I stopped loving him,” I said to the ghost of my grandmother. “And be glad you’re not here, Juanita Anderson, because if you were…” I let the words die off as vain imaginations of what I might be capable of swirled around my brain.

  “How long have you been holding that back?” Darlene’s eyes met mine. They weren’t accusatory, but compassionate.

  “A long time,” I admitted. “Even before I found this,” I said, pointing to the unrecognizable lump of metal, “and discovered the true extent of her evil. Her intercepting a letter is the only thing that makes sense because if Kenny said he was going to send a letter, he would’ve sent a letter.”

  Darlene bent over and started to pick up the pieces of broken plastic. “I have to agree.”

  “Are you okay, Barbie?” Jake asked.

  “Never felt better in my life,” I told him as I headed for the stairs. “Let’s get the rest of the bathroom floor up.”

  Chapter 35

  Time Doesn’t Heal All Wounds. Sometimes They Just Scab Over.

  I wish I could say that my mind stayed in a good place after the lunchbox discovery. I marched up the stairs that day feeling like I’d conquered the world. I’d been so grateful to discover that Kenny hadn’t run off without attempting to leave an explanation. And as angry as I was at my grandmother, I was happy to know that he’d loved me and had planned on coming back. Sadly, it was short-lived because the unanswered question as to why he’d left was still hanging around like an unwelcome bully in a schoolyard. What had his father said that instigated an immediate and impromptu trip to find an aunt he’d never met?

  After months of politely refusing Darlene’s invitations to church, I found myself looking for comfort and peace from a Higher Power. One that I’d given up on as a child. My best friend convinced me that not all the answers we seek might be found in this lifetime and perhaps it was time for me to return to the God whom I’d loved and believed in before Kenny’s abandonment. She reminded me that I was the queen of second chances, and if anybody deserved one, it was the Creator of the universe. She’d been right.

  As I sat in the pew with Darlene’s family and listened to a sermon on forgiveness and the freedom that came with it, I felt a different kind of freedom. It was a sense of peace in knowing I was right back where I belonged. I was thinking about inviting Jake to the upcoming Christmas Eve service when a familiar cough caught my attention. I’d been treating an elderly patient at the clinic for bronchial pneumonia and had confined him to bed rest. I peeked over my left shoulder to seek out the man who’d defied doctor’s orders when I spotted Jake. He was standing at the back of the church near the doors that opened out into the vestibule. He was watching the preacher, and when he felt my eyes on him, he looked at me with an unreadable expression.

  I turned back to face the pulpit and whispered to Darlene, “Jake’s here.”

  She leaned my way and whispered back, “He’s always here.”

  I looked over at her, and when she felt my stare, she quietly said, “He started coming after the first day you met him at Hampton House. He never sits down, just stands in the back. He gets here after the service starts and leaves right before it’s over. He’s only missed once.”

  “The morning after he got cut at The Lonesome Keg,” I concluded. “Why have you never told me? Why has he never told me?” I wanted to know.

  “You never asked.”

  When the service was over, there was no sign of Jake in the church foyer or the parking lot. Like we’d planned, I caught up with him later that morning as we headed off to an indoor flea market a few towns away. We’d recently discovered our mutual love of all things vintage, and as nutty as it sounded, I was on a quest to prevent him from buying a stereo system. I’d discovered a pile of old record albums at his house, and when I asked about them, he told me he’d been on the hunt for a certain type of old-fashioned hi-fi stereo. I found one online and hid it away to give him for Christmas. But now I was faced with the challenge of preventing him from buying one. Every time he came across one he thought he liked, I found something wrong with it to the chagrin of the prospective sellers.

  During the forty-five-minute drive, we talked about some of the history of Pumpkin Rest and the large families that lived there. Jake was impressed and a little awed by the size of Darlene’s brood and their commitment to one another. That segued into a discussion about church, and I asked why he stood in the back instead of sitting with the rest of the congregation. He casually explained that he was still feeling things out. He turned the tables on me by initiating a conversation as to what prompted me to return to my faith since my move back to Pumpkin Rest. It was a
healthy chat where we both confessed to some soul searching that went beyond the physical boundary of an earthly plane. We eventually circled back to family, and he inquired about Fancy and the status of the sale of my condominium in Greenville.

  I explained that she’d left the place in surprisingly good condition, and how it was pretty typical for me not to have heard from her. I asked him what it was like growing up as an only child.

  “I told you I was a late-in-life baby?” It was a statement but presented in the form of a question.

  “Yes, you did.”

  “Did I tell you I had an older brother? Did I ever mention Phillip?” He shot me a sideways glance, and after a quick shake of my head, returned his eyes to the road.

  “You told me you were an only child and that your parents didn’t think they could have children. That’s why you were a surprise,” I reminded him.

  “I guess I wasn’t an only child. I was raised alone, but my parents adopted Phillip years before they had me.”

  I turned in the seat and rested my back against the passenger door. The seat belt was awkward but I found Jake’s profile and story more interesting than the scenery. “What’s he like? Where is he now?”

  “I never met him. He died when he was eight and it was years before I was born. So I was raised as an only child, but there were reminders of Phillip everywhere.” I suddenly felt the weight of grief he was experiencing and something told me it was a story he needed to tell so I remained quiet and let him talk. “It wasn’t until Phillip turned two that my parents discovered he had epilepsy. They did everything they could to make sure he received the best care. My mom admitted to being a little too overprotective with him, but he never gave her a hard time. He was a good kid.”

  “He died from epilepsy?”

  He didn’t give me a direct answer, but instead launched into a story. “My parents had a fountain in the middle of their landscape nursery. You should’ve seen it. It was the most ridiculous ostentatious thing you’ve ever laid eyes on.” He cracked a partial smile at the memory. “Then again, that was Miami in the fifties. It was the first thing people would see when they pulled up to buy plants and flowers, and my parents wanted to make an impression. Mom stocked it with goldfish and it was Phillip’s job to feed the fish.”

  I knew what was coming. What Jake was about to tell me wasn’t uncommon with people who suffered from seizures.

  “Mom never let Phillip near that fountain unless she could see him. And he knew not to go near it. One day the bus dropped him off like it had hundreds of times, and for whatever reason, he strayed from the norm. Mom always kept an eye out for him and she could see him walking toward the house. She remembered looking away for less than sixty seconds and when she looked back, she thought he’d made it to the house and let himself in. But he must’ve gone back to the fountain.” He paused, took a deep breath, and continued. “She always had milk and cookies laid out for him at the kitchen table, so he usually wouldn’t go outside until after he ate his snack.”

  “She found him in the fountain?” My voice was barely a whisper as my eyes started to mist over.

  “No, she didn’t find him.” He turned to look at me as we stopped at a red light. “A couple who’d pulled in to buy flowers found him. He drowned in less than twelve inches of water.”

  I reached across the seat and touched his arm. “I’m so sorry, Jake.”

  “They didn’t deserve that, and it’s why I carry the guilt of disappointing them even more. As I got older I turned into a smart-mouthed, unappreciative teenager who did nothing but cause them trouble.”

  “Like ninety percent of teenagers in the world,” I chided. “You’re being too hard on yourself.” It was almost as if he hadn’t heard me. The light turned green and he pressed on the accelerator.

  “It all started when I became embarrassed by them. They were getting up in age and it showed. During my Little League baseball years, my father never missed one game. He’s the reason I pushed myself to make All-Stars.” He turned his head my way and asked, “Have you ever noticed the baseball I keep in a glass case on my nightstand?”

  We were in Jake’s bedroom to select a paint color for the walls and I had noticed the case. I thought it was one of his flea market finds and assumed it boasted a familiar signature. However, I never looked close enough to see whose. “I’ve seen it. I figured it’s signed by some famous player.”

  He stared out over the steering wheel, his knuckles white as he gripped it tightly with his right hand. “My father gave it to me. When I was striking out and missing catches and generally failing at baseball, my father saw the potential that I couldn’t see. So he went out and bought a baseball and asked me to sign it for him. He made a big deal out of it and told me that if I was going to play baseball like the star he knew I could be, I had to feel the part. He asked me for my autograph and displayed it in our living room. He was right. It made me a better player, and like I already told you, I made the All-Stars two years in a row.” I could see the pain in his profile, the regret in the slight sag of his jaw. “Other than some faded pictures, that baseball is the only thing I have left of them. It’s my most prized possession.”

  I could only assume that seeing the treasures unearthed in Fancy’s lunchbox had brought on a bout of nostalgia, and our earlier discussion about Darlene’s close-knit family had exacerbated those feelings. “So what happened?” I softly inquired.

  He gave a noncommittal shrug and said, “Like I said before, I was embarrassed by them. I was more concerned with what my friends thought. It only took one kid to ask me why my grandpa came to all my games instead of my father. It was like a switch was flipped. I started comparing them to the other kids’ younger and cooler parents. I resented the station wagons filled with families who went on summer vacations that included everything from water skiing to beach volleyball, and the younger dads who were in good enough shape to coach the team and play catch with their boys. Looking back, I was ridiculous and how I treated them is still the biggest regret of my life. That’s when I stopped playing baseball, turned into a punk, and started getting in trouble.”

  Stretching the seat belt tight, I leaned toward him and placed my hand on his right knee. “We all have regrets, Jake. We’re all ashamed of things we did when we were children. Things we wish we could take back. From the little bit you’ve told me, I’m certain your parents forgave you. They sound like they were incredible and caring people. And time heals all wounds. Maybe it’s time you let it heal yours.”

  His voice sounded rusty when he replied, “Time doesn’t heal all wounds. Sometimes they just scab over.”

  “And scabs dry up and fall off if you don’t pick at them. Perhaps you need to let this one fall off, Jake.”

  He grabbed my hand that had been resting on his knee and brought it to his lips. “You are such an amazing woman, Barbie. Even with your painful past you’ve managed to comfort me about mine.” He kissed my wrist, and after letting go of my hand, popped in a CD and turned it up. His favorite country artist’s voice filled the cab of the truck.

  An old familiar song begins to play

  Reminding me and her of the day we first met

  And time stood still

  A little kiss on the neck and it heats up

  So I find a place to park my truck

  I let go and let passion take the wheel

  It doesn’t get better than this

  Without warning, he took a sharp right onto a dirt road and pulled over.

  I looked around at the secluded area. “What are you doing?”

  After putting the truck in park, he reached over me and unlatched my seat belt. He roughly tugged me into his arms and said, “I’m finding a place to park my truck so I can make out with my lady.”

  And that’s what we did. I took the opportunity to climb onto his lap and straddle him. I could feel his arousal through the thickness of his denim jeans, and I moaned into his mouth as I moved against him.

  I jump
ed when there was a loud tap on the glass. Our heads whipped around to find a toothless old man yelling into the slightly cracked window, “This is a private road. Y’all need to be taking your personal business elsewhere. I don’t want my grand young-uns interruptin’ something they shouldn’t be a seein’.”

  We both tried to conceal our smiles as I climbed back over to my side of the cab. Jake apologized and turned the truck around.

  We laughed about it and I secretly wondered how far we might’ve gone. How far I’d been willing to go. Did I want my first time with Jake to be in the front seat of an old pickup truck? Did he?

  His voice interrupted my contemplation. “What are you thinking about?”

  “My property,” I lied. “I’ve been told my soil is fertile. I’m wondering if I should consider planting something.” I tucked my hair behind my ear. “You know. Other than my crummy little vegetable garden that I’ve neglected.”

  “You do have a lot of land. And you also own the stills that used to belong to the Pritchards. Have you ever considered going into the legal moonshine business?”

  I was startled by his question. It’s one I hadn’t pondered. My delayed response brought an apology. “I’m sorry, Barbie. I forgot it’s a touchy subject.” There was an awkward pause to which he added, “I mean, you told me after the incident at The Lonesome Keg how Dustin and his friends had confronted you about the Pritchard family recipe. And you told them you didn’t know it. I’m sorry for bringing it up.”

  I looked down at my knee and rubbed my hand against a worn spot on my jeans. A few more washings and it would be a hole. His assumptions and apology hung in the air like a floating feather that refused to fall.

  We’d arrived at our destination and he parked and turned off the truck. “Barbie?” I wasn’t purposely ignoring him. Just stalling. “You don’t know the Pritchards’ secret recipe, right?”