Out of Time

by Beth Flynn

  More than a year later some big tattooed man showed up at my work. He told me he was taking you and he threatened me and Vince. Then he showed me what was left of Johnny Tillman. Worse yet, he told me that he knew about my past. He was responsible for scaring Steve Marcus away and he knew about the bombing. Marcus must have told him. I was afraid for myself and Vince. I wasn’t afraid for you, Ginny. I am so sorry. So very sorry.

  I’ve been trying to find you. Vince and I have finally sobered up and I told him about my past. I told him everything. He’s sorry about you too. We’ve gone to the police, but they just take notes and tell us they’ll get back to us. I asked Guido just yesterday if he remembered a man like that coming around our house. It never occurred to me the man must have seen you somewhere. Maybe he even lived in our neighborhood back then and I’d never noticed him. Of course, I was too wasted to notice much back then.

  I’m writing this letter as part of my therapy. I don’t know if you’ll ever get to read it because I don’t know if I’ll ever find you. But if I do find you, I will look you in the eyes and tell you I’m truly, truly sorry. I will let you read this and I will ask for your forgiveness. God has taught me about forgiveness. And if you don’t forgive me, I will have to accept that. I’m not even sure I forgive myself at this point, but I’m trying and God knows that.

  I tried looking for your sister, too. I’d had high hopes that she would’ve been adopted by a nice family. Instead, I found a death certificate. She died a week after I left her there. I have nothing to remember her by. Not a picture, a piece of clothing she would’ve worn. Nothing. All I have is a memory of a lovely nurse who cared for her as if she was her own. I don’t even remember the nurse’s name, just that she had a pretty accent. She used to call your sister Cricket because when Jodi would take a deep breath, her exhale came out sounding like little chirps.

  I don’t have much to remember you by either, Ginny. After that man took you, I started cleaning out the house. Told myself that by removing any memory of you, I could remove the guilt that had slowly sunk into my soul. Maybe it was there all along and seeing your things called attention to it. Your Bible was something I could hide in the bottom of a never-used drawer, and that’s where it’s been for all of these years. I hate the picture of you I found tucked inside. It was taken during a time I know you were being horribly neglected. But it’s now all I have along with yours and Jodi’s original birth certificates,which I recently was able to track down.

  Vince is taking me on a trip back to the city where I went to college. I’m going to face my past and admit my part in the bombing. Although my part was never anything more than going to a few protests, I was married to the man who helped plan and plant that bomb.

  When I get back, I will continue my search for you. And I will continue writing this letter. Maybe you’ll want to know more about your father. I can do that. I can tell you more about him.

  She hadn’t signed it. Through blurry vision, Ginny stared at the three-page note as tears streamed down her cheeks. Delia never signed it because she’d never made it home to finish it. Ginny looked at the date on the letter; Delia and Vince had died in a car accident less than a week later.

  Attached to the back of the note were four pieces of paper: The fake birth certificate that Delia had made for Guinevere Love Lemon all those years ago and the two real ones showing hers and Jodi’s real birthdays. They were born in 1958. Jodi’s death certificate was also attached.

  Just then, Carter walked in and said, “I just came back for my—oh, Gin, what’s wrong?” She ran to her friend. “Why are you crying, honey? What’s wrong? Bad memories? Do you want me to call Tommy?”

  Ginny tried to smile. “No, I finally got some answers. That’s all. I finally got some answers.”

  It was bittersweet to find out she wasn’t an only child. At least not for the first few months of her life. What would her life have been like if her father hadn’t helped plant that bomb? What would it have been like to have been raised by a sober Alice Crespin and a father? Her heart felt heavy. Was it possible to mourn a life you didn’t have? If she’d had that life, she most certainly wouldn’t have been raised in Florida. She would never have known Grizz. She would never have known Tommy. She wouldn’t have her children.

  It had been difficult to read Delia’s note, and yet there was something freeing in it as well. She got a little angry when she realized someone had held on to this Bible for years. Delia had died in 1980. Why was it only being given to her now? And in an envelope addressed only to her gang name. Was there any significance?

  No. There wasn’t. She was certain of that. Maybe it had just been forgotten about. It didn’t matter now, anyway. None of it did actually. None of it.

  She took a deep breath and remembered her reason for being at Carter’s. She would handle cleaning out the garage now. She passed the note to Carter and told her to read it for herself. She wiped her tears with the back of her hands and smiled. “I’m going to go tackle the garage. I am so ready to start over, Carter.”

  Carter looked up from the note and smiled at her. “I can come help you.”

  “No. I’ll do it myself.”

  She walked with long sure strides to the side of the garage and tried to ignore the pain in her chest. The pain of a life she hadn’t known, wouldn’t know, but yet somehow still grieved. You’ve made progress, Ginny. Don’t fall apart now. You should be happy to know the truth. To know Delia had regrets about you. She couldn’t deny, though, that even with Delia’s confession, it stung to not read somewhere in the note that Delia had loved her.

  She opened the door with the key that had been put back under the ceramic frog. She went in and flipped on the light, then pressed the button to open all three automatic garage doors. She was looking down as she walked toward the motorcycles. She smiled as she caught a whiff of fresh air from the newly raised doors. She reached into her back pocket for the blue bandana and stopped dead in her tracks.

  Grizz’s favorite bike was gone.

  She held the bandana in her hand and stared at the spot where she’d laid on the ground and cried over a month ago. Then she looked up and walked out of the garage, gazing across the expanse of the property. She looked at the bandana in her hand. And she remembered all those years ago when Grizz was first incarcerated in the county jail.

  “If you ever need anything,” he’d said then, “I mean fucking anything, and Grunt can’t be there for you, you put your hair up in one of those high ponytails you like to wear and you wrap my bandana around it. You hear me? You wear my bandana, and it might take a day or two, but you’ll get whatever help you need. You understand me?”

  Now she knew. She knew what he meant. But how? Who? Who would’ve gotten a message to Grizz in jail or prison that she needed him? Who was watching out for her if it wasn’t Tommy?

  Movement in her peripheral vision caught her attention and she quickly glanced at the front porch. Carter was sitting there in a rocking chair. She had her right leg perched on the edge of the chair and had one arm resting on it casually as she rocked. The note from Delia was dangling from her hand. Their eyes met. Carter gave her a small smile.

  Carter? Her dear, sweet friend Carter had been keeping an eye on her for Grizz? Grizz, the man she’d accused of not caring about other people. All those years ago, when she’d told Grizz about her new friend that she met at college, Carter, and the stalker causing her so much fear. The stalker that left her alone after she went to the police and took out a restraining order. Ginny realized now there had been no police report or restraining order. Grizz had taken care of it and gained an ally for life.

  Tears filled her eyes again. Did she want to know? Did she dare to ask? Could it be? She looked at the blue bandana in her hand and at the empty spot where Grizz’s bike used to be. Then she looked back at her friend. They locked eyes, and she knew Carter would tell her the truth. Carter nodded slightly.

  Hope was replaced with an immediate and intense anger. An ang
er she hadn’t expected. How dare he! How dare he do this to her! If she was reading Carter’s nod correctly, then it meant he was alive. Grizz was out there, and he was alive.

  Did Tommy know?

  She thought about her husband’s behavior since Grizz’s execution. No. Tommy didn’t know. She was certain of that. She could tell by his actions. If he even suspected Grizz was still alive, he would be acting even more protective of her. Tommy wasn’t behaving like a man whose life was still on hold while he waited for the other shoe to drop. No. He was behaving like a man who had just started to live. He really believed the kitten was a signal from the grave that all had been forgiven. She had naively believed it, too.

  She dropped to the paved driveway and sat cross-legged as she digested what she was learning. Still clutching the bandana, she started to cry again. But it wasn’t a melancholy, soft cry. It was an angry, loud one. She felt Carter’s arms try to hug her from behind and she shook her off.

  “Don’t! Don’t, Carter. Leave me alone,” she wailed as she rejected her friend’s attempt at solace.

  Carter stood and walked around to face her. Looking up, Ginny cried, “Carter, leave me alone. Just go away and leave me alone.”

  Carter squatted and grabbed Ginny’s face with both hands. Using her thumbs to wipe away Ginny’s tears, she quietly asked, “What did you expect him to do, Gin? Did you expect him to show up on your doorstop and announce it? Did you expect that he should’ve given you a choice? Put you in the position of having to decide whether to leave your family and disappear with him? To live under new identities? Or leave Tommy and take your kids with you to be with him and start over somewhere? Can you imagine the two of you trying to raise children who would question why they’d been taken from the only father they’d ever known? Think about the choices you would’ve had to make if he’d shown up.”

  “Stop making excuses for him.” Ginny swiped at her tears. “I never asked anything of him but the truth, Carter. That’s all I ever asked of him from the very beginning. He wouldn’t even tell me his real name. And don’t think for a second I don’t know I probably named my son after an alias. He never trusted me enough to really let me in. I got pieces here and there, but he never told me a thing.”

  Her voice got very low then and came out in almost a growl. “I’m not stupid. I know he had Blue set Jan and Matthew up. I’m sure Tommy thinks it, too, but we would never talk about it. That’s what we’ve done in our home for years. Deny our past and try to pretend we weren’t part of something so horrible. And if Grizz thought for a second that Tommy was the one that helped Jan, he’d be paying for it.”

  “Ginny, don’t—”

  “I hate him! I hate him, Carter!”

  The sobs began anew, became loud and uncontrollable. Carter reached for her again, and this time, Ginny let herself be held and comforted.

  “How could he do this to me? How could he make me love him so much only to leave me? Then to make me mourn him, and now, to know that he’s alive and purposely chose not to be with me all those years ago? I hate him for that, Carter.”

  Carter spoke softly. “I don’t believe you hate him, Ginny.” She looked at her friend. “I don’t know any of the details and I don’t want to know. But I do know one thing. I know the choice to be with you must have been taken away from him. Because I have never seen a man, any man, maybe not even Tommy, love a woman like Grizz loves you. I’ve never seen a man go out of his way to protect someone he couldn’t be with. You may be having a lot of doubts about him now, and I don’t blame you. But one thing you should never doubt is his love for you.”

  Carter pulled back from Ginny and could see by her expression that Ginny had heard her. She was starting to take in big gulps of air, and the tears were subsiding.

  They sat like that for a few minutes. Ginny used the bandana to wipe at her tears as she tried to calm her breathing.

  “I’m fine now,” she said in a small raw voice. “He made the choice for me, so I’m done talking about it.”

  Carter gave her a questioning look. This was so like Ginny. Brave, resolved, determined.

  “Seriously, Carter. I’m fine. It’s been a rough day. My Bible and now this, but I’m okay. Well, I’m not okay, but I will be.”

  Carter nodded at her. She knew Ginny needed a little space, some time to process all this. “I’ll be out back with the horses if you need me. I love you, Gin.”

  Ginny watched her friend head for the horse stalls while she took another deep breath. She tried to collect her thoughts. Twenty-five years of memories washed over her in a single moment. She knew without a doubt there was truth in what Carter had said. She never once doubted Grizz’s real and genuine love for her. And if she was remembering the Grizz she’d married and fallen in love with all of those years ago, then this situation wasn’t of his choosing. He wasn’t with her because he couldn’t be, not because he didn’t want to be. She didn’t know why, and she didn’t know if it was something she should try to find out. And if she did find out, then what would she do?

  No, Carter’s explanation made sense. How could she have chosen?

  Her head was spinning and she realized Grizz had done her a favor. He had loved her enough to spare her from having to make that choice. Still, he needed her to know he was there. He would always be her protector. But did she really need to know that? Was this his way of ruining her life with Tommy? She knew subconsciously she’d let Grizz cast a shadow over her marriage. It wasn’t until his death last month and her return home to Tommy that she really let herself put her past where it belonged. In the past. That didn’t last long.

  She couldn’t exactly say what she was feeling. Anger, relief, remorse, grief. She was so conflicted. It was just too much. Delia’s letter, and now this.

  Don’t lose it, Gin. Don’t lose it now. You’ve come too far.

  She looked at the bandana clutched so tightly in her fist that her knuckles were turning white. She wouldn’t make a decision today. She would do what she came here to do: Clean out the garage and her past with it. She wiped the last of her tears with the already-soaked bandana and, lifting her right hip off the pavement, she tucked it away in her back pocket. Maybe Grizz was right.

  After all, she had no way of knowing if she might need the bandana one day. She had no way of knowing if she might need him one day. Him. Jason William Talbot.

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  2001, Six Months Later

  Somewhere in Louisiana

  He didn’t know how long he’d been riding. He barely remembered the roads, the little towns he passed through, the crummy diners, the dilapidated old motels. He shook his head. The motels.

  Memories pierced and taunted his heart. Big brown eyes, an innocent stare, tears, laughter, passion, love. The passion. There had been a lot of passion. The love. There had been even more love.

  He shook his head as he tried to reason with himself. He tried to remember why he’d done the things he had. Nothing, not even fifteen years in prison or the near-death experience he’d had on the lethal injection table, had prepared him for the emptiness, the hollowness of a soul that didn’t love. Or worse yet, a soul that didn’t think it could love again, found it with Kit, only to lose it.

  Lose it by his own stupidity.

  Twenty-five years ago, he’d seen a spark of light. He lived in the radiance of that light for ten years. He hadn’t realized how bright that light truly was until he had to live without it while he was stuck in that prison. And then he’d actually died on that table and saw what darkness was like. Real darkness.

  Kit had tried to share her faith with him for so many years. To introduce him to a God he was certain didn’t exist. He had been wrong. He now knew Kit’s God existed, because he was pulled from what he was certain was the pit of hell. If hell was real, and he now knew it was, then heaven had to be real, too.

  But he was certain it wasn’t there for the likes of him.

  He remembered at his execution motioning to Kit t
o show him her ring tattoo. He couldn’t see his name, but he knew it was still there, and that was all he needed to see. He knew they, he, had permanently removed her from his life, but they couldn’t remove him from her heart. She could’ve had that tattoo removed years ago, especially when he’d told her she had to move on with her life and leave him behind. She had finally fallen in love with Grunt, had a child with him.

  But she didn’t have Grizz’s name removed. As small a consolation as that was, it was all he had gotten and more than he deserved.

  He’d fucked up big time in more ways than he cared to admit. Regret, an emotion he rarely admitted to, pierced his conscience, and as hard as he tried to bury it, it was there all the same. He’d had no way of knowing all those years ago he would fall in love with her. He didn’t care about people back then and he certainly didn’t love. Especially after Ruthie.

  But all of that changed after he’d had her brought to the motel.

  And what the hell was he even doing in Louisiana? He knew he was looking for some connection to the woman who’d been torn from her home as an infant and forced to live under an assumed name by her foolish mother. He hadn’t seen Delia’s note from Kit’s Bible since the day Guido had showed it to him all those years ago. But he thought he remembered the city on Kit’s real birth certificate. The certificate Delia had tracked down. So, he mused, Kit had been seventeen when he took her, not fifteen. He should have felt some relief at knowing she was slightly older back then, but honestly, he didn’t care. Her age was never a factor in his decision to take her.

  He couldn’t remember the name of the hospital but found one he thought could’ve been where she was born. He sat on his bike and stared at it. Idiot. He didn’t even know if he was remembering the city right, so the chance he was sitting in front of the hospital where she was born was slim to none. What had he been hoping to find here, anyway? Nothing, really. He knew there was nothing to find. It was just his last feeble attempt at grabbing onto something that was part of her.