“I’m sure you did,” he said around a grin. “Well, I’ve got to get back to work. I just wanted to check on you.”
“I love you so much.”
“You too … say, what are you doing with yourself the rest of the day?”
“Well, I just got back from the grocery store so I’m going to put things away. After that, I don’t know. What time do I need to pick you up?”
“Six.”
“I can’t wait. I miss you so much.”
“Miss you more. Gotta go, hon.”
“Love you,” she said again.
“More.”
Westley stopped at the post-Christmas sales display and grabbed a small stuffed Santa, then snatched the tag off and handed it to Miss Ramona, the fifty-something who’d worked the register since “Moses was a boy,” as Miss Justine put it. “Miss Ramona, hold on to that for me if you will. I’ll pay for it after lunch.”
One dark, penciled-in brow shot up over cat-framed glasses. “Mind telling me who was that young woman who came in a while ago?”
Westley gave the spinster his best smile, one that always worked when it came to the fairer sex. “Just someone I knew from Baxter. Went to school with her sister.” He waved the Santa back and forth in the air. “Be right back,” he said, then scooted two blocks over to Mama Jean’s. Along the way he pulled his wallet from his back pocket, then tucked his wedding ring behind his license before sliding the wallet where it belonged. He glanced at his left hand, worried that the barely-a-week impression of nuptial vows would give him away before he had a chance to share his secrets. His torment.
With Cindie, that he was married.
With Allison, that he was a father.
He found Cindie exactly where he’d asked her to be, near the back, two cups of coffee on the table, steam curling and hovering like the Spirit over the deep. And, as luck would have it, he didn’t recognize a soul in the restaurant. Give him another month, and they’d all know him and he them. But for now …
“For Michelle,” he said as he handed Santa across the table and dropped onto the seat left vacant for him.
Cindie smiled. Rubbed it against the cheek that didn’t seem nearly as red as it had earlier under the florescent lighting of the pharmacy. “She’ll love it,” she said, then dropped it onto her purse.
“Your cheek looks better.”
“Don’t worry none about Lettie Mae. I rile her up every now and then and she just has to let off steam, I reckon.”
“As long as—”
“She don’t hurt Michelle, Westley. I promise you that.”
He nodded. Looking at her. Taking her in. She tried; he knew she tried. Still, she couldn’t come even remotely close to Allison’s beauty. Her purity. Her intelligence. Everything about the woman sitting across from him reminded him of how stupid a bottle of wine—okay, two bottles of wine—could make him. How desperate, perhaps. What’s more, how quickly he needed to act to get his daughter away from the day-to-day influence of Lettie Mae Campbell, if not from her own mother. “Earrings look nice,” he said, mainly because he needed to say something. The air around them was changing to something he may not be able to control—her wanting more than he would ever give her again and him wanting to blurt out the truth then and there and be done with it. He peered over his shoulder. “Where’s the waitress? I’ve only got an hour.”
“Oh, I already ordered,” she said, and he looked back at her. “Burgers and fries … like that night.”
He blinked. “What night?”
She pinked. “The night we—you know …”
And he understood. “Ah. Yeah.”
Cindie leaned forward, her arms tucked under the table, her hands in her lap. Probably clutching each other if he were to bet. “So, are you coming over tomorrow? I mean, now that you’re back in town and all? I figured … Wednesday is our day.”
He would, had he a car. And that might take some explaining. “We’ll see.”
Her face fell. “Well—why wouldn’t you? Michelle misses you.”
The thought of his daughter looking for him turned his stomach to beach sand—the kind closest to the shoreline—and brought about a surprising expectancy. “I miss her, too.”
“And me?”
Westley his opened mouth to say something trite like “yes, of course,” but the waitress appeared at the exact moment, the aroma of grease and burger and crinkle fries brought to a perfect golden brown causing his mouth to water, reminding him that he was actually pretty hungry. He and Allison had skipped dinner the night before and he’d only had a bowl of cereal with a sliced banana for breakfast. No coffee; Allison hadn’t learned how to perk it yet and he didn’t have time to show her or make it himself. He inwardly thanked God for Miss Ramona and the pot she made each morning, fresh and hot and waiting in the employee’s lounge at the pharmacy. “Wow,” he said, then glanced up at the waitress. “My compliments to the chef and I haven’t even taken a bite yet.”
The young woman with a slicked-back ponytail and too many teeth for the size of her mouth smiled, her chewing gum peeking out from where it rested on a molar. “Y’all need anything else?”
Westley searched the table, spied the Hunt’s Ketchup, which Mama Jean’s continued to serve in the commemorative Spirit of ’76 bottle, and said, “Mustard?”
“Be right back.”
Westley watched her spin on a heel and leave, aware that Cindie stared at him, conscious that she waited for a reply to her question. Knowing it was time to be honest—at least partially. “Look, Cindie …” he began, then stopped as the waitress returned with the mustard bottle, then left again. “I know what you’re hoping for …” He watched her expression change. Hope giving way to honesty and then again to heartbreak. What was it the preacher said at his wedding? Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life. “Keep hope alive,” he’d coaxed the bride and groom who stood side by side, their hands clasped in union. “Fulfill desire,” he’d added with a wink toward the groom. He could do that with Allison, but not with Cindie. Never again with Cindie. But he didn’t have to crush her. That certainly wasn’t his intent. “Look,” he said again. “I know what you’re hoping for and it’s not—”
“Why not?”
“Because, sweetheart, I don’t feel that way about you.” He brought his hands up, then placed them on the table. “I’m sorry. I’m probably the biggest cad in the world—”
“What’s a cad?”
“A—a cad is a—a scoundrel.” Right there. Right there was another reason … Not knowing a simple word like cad. “Cindie, I want you to fulfill your potential. I told you that.” He popped a fry in his mouth; if he was going to eat at all, he’d have to work it in between the beginning and ending of her undoing. And, perhaps, his own.
“I can, Westley. As your wife I can.”
“No,” he said around a swallow.
“Why not?” Her eyes widened. Her lips pursed. Understanding dawned. “Is there someone—someone else?”
Here it was. His chance. Or, at least, half a chance. “Yes.”
Cindie pushed at her plate, which hit the mug of coffee she’d yet to drink from, sending the contents over the edge to form a small waterfall, its tiny pool lying around the base like a mud pond. Somewhat like, he had to admit, his father’s reaction to finding out about Michelle. And now, this …
Westley grabbed a napkin from the dispenser and handed it to her, but she slapped his hand away. “Is it serious?”
“It is,” he answered, now mopping up the spill himself.
She stood so quickly he had to grab at his plate to keep from wearing the contents. “Don’t bother coming tomorrow,” she said. Loudly. Too loudly.
“Sit down,” he told her, the tips of his ears growing warm. Cindie causing a scene was the last thing he needed.
“No. I won’t. And I don’t have to let you see her. I don’t,” she all but screamed before throwing the Santa at his chest, then stomping toward the café’s
front door like the near-child she was.
“Cin—” he called after her, half turning in his seat to see that—seemingly—every diner now focused on the argument in the back. He raised his hand in apology, then turned back to the unconsumed meals that grew cold.
“Is everything okay?”
He looked up. The waitress had returned. “Yeah,” he conceded, then pointed to his plate. “Can I have both of these in a couple of to-gos?”
He’d eat back in the break room . . . and take Cindie’s meal to Miss Ramona as a token.
Of what, he wasn’t quite sure.
Cindie
By the time she reached her mother’s car, the tears that threatened to spill over did exactly that. She jammed the key into the lock, twisted it with such force she surprised herself that it didn’t break off, then scrambled into the car as quickly as she could. Within seconds she gasped, her hands gripping the cold, cracking vinyl of the steering wheel. They flexed. Once. Twice until she held onto it as though holding onto a life raft in the middle of a tumultuous ocean. She brought her forehead down hard on the wheel. Moments later, she raised up, then slammed her hands down on the dashboard as a primal growl rose from inside her. Against Westley. Against this girl, whoever she was. Against herself. Against Lettie Mae and her father and everything that life had sucked out of her.
“I hate him!” she shrieked, then looked around to see if she had brought any attention to herself.
She hadn’t . . . for such a busy little town, nothing stirred right then. But she noticed a phone booth nearby and, as if she were an actor in some movie playing at the Mahoney Theater in downtown Baxter, she knew her next move.
First, wipe her nose and dry her face, which she did with an old McDonald’s napkin she found on the floorboard. She opened the car door, then stepped out. One foot on the pavement. Then another. She hoisted herself up and out. Slammed the door behind her with little effort, mainly because that was all that was left inside. She then made her way to the phone booth that smelled like old beer and perspiration. Stuck her finger into the 0 of the rotary dial and waited.
“Operator.”
“Operator,” Cindie said, keeping her voice as steady as she knew how. “Do you have a listing for a Westley—W-E-S-T-L-E-Y—Westley Houser in—um—Odenville?”
“Hold please,” a soft voice replied, then: “I have a new listing—”
“That would be it.”
“On Rosemary Street.”
She wasn’t sure, but … “That’s it.”
The operator gave the number. “Oh,” Cindie said. “Wait …” She dug into her purse until she found a pen and an old receipt for baby powder, then scribbled the number down and repeated it back. “Thank you.”
Within a minute she was back in the car, unsure what to do next. Another minute and she was back out on the sidewalk, waiting for someone to walk by. And when they did, she asked, “Do you know how to get to Rosemary Street?” A minute after that, her car was pointed in the right direction, her eyes scanning the houses—little cookie cutters standing between pretty trees and edged lawns—until she found exactly what she was looking for: Westley’s hot new car.
Cindie slowed Lettie Mae’s to a crawl, her heart racing, her breath coming in rapid beats. Was that her? The young woman sitting on the front porch, legs crossed, dark hair falling over her face, nose pointed toward a book opened on her lap—was that her? And what was she doing there? Cooking? Cleaning? Waiting for Westley? Had to be because she seemed to have possession of his car.
She kept going until she was at a safe distance, then pulled into a random driveway, backed up and drove past the house again. Yes. That was definitely Westley’s car and, this time, the woman looked up. She was—okay—she was pretty in a Seventeen Magazine cover sort of way. Fresh-faced. Almost … nearly … perfect. But Cindie had one thing that chick didn’t—Westley’s baby girl.
A few minutes later Cindie turned the car back in the direction of the house for one more look. To assure herself. Or maybe to convince herself. And, again, the young woman spied her, their eyes practically shooting messages across the distance between them. Cindie continued on, this time driving farther down the street, turning into a different driveway. This time gripping the steering wheel so hard she worried it would come apart in her hands.
She swore at Westley again, this time between her teeth. A hiss like the snake he was. He was the father of her child … but he had some woman living with him. Not her. Not plain Cindie Campbell. Plain and stupid Cindie Campbell.
No. She had to face it, the woman on the porch was … everything she was not.
A brow rose as two facts collided—yes, that girl was everything but one thing. She wasn’t Michelle’s mother. And she never would be. If Cindie needed to use her child to her advantage, so be it.
Chapter Eighteen
Allison
As soon as I spotted Westley coming out of the pharmacy, I moved to the passenger’s side of the car, anxious for my husband to get in and kiss me. He all but trotted toward me, then opened the door and, before sliding in, stuck his hand in and waved a small stuffed Santa toward me.
“What’s this?” I asked, taking it. “A Christmas present?”
Westley drew the seat belt over him, buckled it, then leaned over for the much-anticipated kiss. “Just a little something that says I love you.”
“Oh, Wes,” I sighed. “Can we go home? I mean, we don’t have anywhere else to be, do we?”
“Yes, ma’am, we can and no ma’am we do not.”
As I hugged the Santa to my breast, he backed the car out of the parking space and into the slow-moving traffic. “So,” he said, “tell me about your afternoon. What did you do with yourself?”
I glanced out the window, placed my hand upon it, felt the chill from the night air pushing against it. “Well … I sat outside on the porch for a while. Did some reading.” I gave a little shrug, not sure how to tell him about the car that had passed back and forth in front of the house. “Something … well, something kind of odd happened.”
“Odd?”
I looked at him—the point of his nose, the angle of his chin, the curl in his hair that took on a slight frizz in the moist winter air—and shook my head. “Truth is, I wasn’t reading for pleasure. I was looking through that Betty Crocker Cooking for Two cookbook that Grand gave me for Christmas and—”
Westley shot a crooked smile my way. “God bless Grand.”
“Funny.”
He turned down a not-yet-familiar road where the streetlamps had all come on, casting soft funnels of light along a sidewalk. “So, something strange happened?” He laughed. “Did you spot a recipe you can’t wait to try out on me?”
I ignored the tease. “Not strange. Odd.”
“Okay.”
“While I was outside, there was this car that drove past really slow. I looked up and—I know it’s probably crazy on my part—but I thought the girl behind the wheel was—you’re going to think I’m silly, but, I thought she was staring at me.” Westley looked at me sharply, but only for a moment. “And then she pulled into a driveway and turned around and did the same thing and—not too long after—she did the same thing again.”
For a moment I thought Westley stopped breathing, or that perhaps he’d not heard me. Then he asked, “What kind of car?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know cars, Wes. But it was long and brown and kind of old. Beat up.”
“And the girl?” he asked, keeping his focus straight ahead.
“From what I could see, she had blondish hair. It was pulled up. A nice face …” I touched his arm. “I wasn’t scared or anything. She looked too young to be dangerous. I just don’t understand why she kept driving by and staring at me.”
The car turned into our driveway. “I see you left the front porch light on.”
“Mama always did … made me feel all grown up turning it on before I left to come get you.”
Westley all but shoved the gearsh
ift into Park before saying, “Let’s get inside.” The dimness of light from the porch found his face; he’d aged. In the past five minutes. I could see it. Something I had said. Or done. Something had added time to his face and taken it away from his soul.
I squeezed the Santa. “What?”
He looked at me. “Let’s—I need to talk to you about something and—all right, it may as well be now.”
I spent the rest of the evening and most of the night sobbing into my pillow, my arm wrapped around the little Santa, sleep occasionally coaxing me to itself with puffy eyes and swollen lips. Anguish gripped me as I’d never experienced. As though someone—or something—had died.
But no one—and nothing—had.
The man I loved—and still loved—had a child. A daughter. With the woman in the long brown car. The girl with the pretty face and blond hair swept up, soft tendrils curling to her shoulders.
Westley had shown me the cheaply framed photograph—Michelle, he’d called her—as he told me everything. Or everything he chose to tell. Which was fine; if there was more, I couldn’t take it. What he’d said as he reached across the table to hold my hand was enough. “That girl—and that’s really all she is, sweetheart—is Cindie Campbell.” His eyes never left mine, as though begging me to believe him. Telling me I should when I couldn’t. Or maybe that I could when I couldn’t. I was too young, too inexperienced in the rules of love and deception to be sure. “And she and I have a child together. A daughter …”
Life intersected with his words and pulled me into a vortex. Drew me with such speed and power I felt like Alice falling through the rabbit hole. Westley’s face grew fuzzy. Time slowed and sped up all at once. His words garbled like Charlie Brown’s teacher when she spoke from the head of the classroom—wah-wah-wah-wah. Or a record playing at the wrong speed. I stood, pushing his hand away, and retreated to the bathroom where I threw up the three bites of tuna casserole I’d managed to eat before he’d lowered the boom, then went into our bedroom and slid between the cool sheets to bury my face.
Westley had the good sense to leave me alone, sleeping in the spare bedroom. The guest bedroom—the one where my sister and her husband would sleep come the weekend. Dear God, where will Westley sleep then?
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