Barefoot in the Rain

by Roxanne St Claire

  What was she about to tell him? What happened that last night? By the next day Jocelyn had left Mimosa Key; he never knew how she got away. And, shit, he’d been too scared to find out. Scared to lose his scholarship. Scared to lose everything he’d promised his own father. Scared of the recriminations of pursuing a girl he thought he—no, a girl he really did love.

  He hadn’t been willing to pay the price, and he’d had to live with that. Had to pay it now, in a different way.

  “Jocelyn.” He took one step closer, slowly taking his hands out of his pockets, that need to reach for her still strong. Instead he cracked his knuckles like he had a million times in the dugout during a tense inning. “I understand your position. Maybe you could… we could… find someone to live with him. Or stay with him during the day.”

  “That’s—”

  “Expensive, I know. God, I know exactly what it costs and he doesn’t have that much money left and neither do I, or I’d—”

  She waved him quiet. “I would never expect you to pay for his care. He’s my problem and I’ll have a solution. That’s what I do, really. This is right in my wheelhouse.”

  “In your wheelhouse?” He almost choked on a batting term he’d heard a hundred times on the field, the expression wrong right here in so many ways.

  “Yes, this is what I do. I’m a life coach, Will. I put people’s lives back together. I help them find solutions to the problems of life. I organize, structure, prioritize, and master their everyday lives. Usually I teach them how to do that for themselves, but in this case, I’ll just skip that step.”

  She sounded so clinical. “Actually,” she continued, slowing down as if a thought had just occurred to her. “If it’s going to make things easier for him to believe that I’m from some TV show, then fine, I can play that game, as long as we can get him away somewhere.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll find a facility.”

  A facility. “You can’t just lock him up. He’s a person,” he said stiffly.

  “He’s an anim—”

  “Not anymore he’s not!” His exclamation echoed through the garage, making Jocelyn’s eyes pop wide and her cheeks pale. Son of a bitch, that was the wrong thing to do. “The disease has changed him,” he added softly.

  “Alzheimer’s doesn’t affect your soul.” She hissed the last word, then closed her eyes to turn away. “Does the car run?” She gestured toward Guy’s old Toyota.

  He cleared his throat and jammed one more knuckle that refused to crack. “Yeah, I start it up every week or so to make sure the battery doesn’t drain.”

  “Good, then I won’t have to rent one to go to the mainland. You don’t have to worry about him anymore, Will.”

  He put a hand on her shoulder and slowly turned her toward him. “It’s not him I’m worried about.”

  She held his gaze, inches away, the first glimmer of vulnerability in her eyes. Shaking him off, she slipped out of his touch. “I better get to work.”

  “Now?” He practically spit the word. “Today? This minute?”

  “Of course. There’s no reason to wait.” She put her hands on her hips as she looked around the garage and up to the loft, where more boxes were piled. “Are any of those empty cartons? I’ll need them. And these.” She snagged a box of Hefty bags from the worktable, yanking out a sheet of thick black plastic. “I’m sure there’s plenty of trash around here.”

  He just stared at her. Who was this woman? Where was the tender, vulnerable, soft young girl he’d been so madly in love with when he was seventeen?

  She snapped the bag with a satisfying crack. “Don’t you have to go back to work?”

  He took a step backward. “Yeah, I do. I’ll be back here later.”

  “Why?”

  “To make him dinner.”

  She lifted an eyebrow. “I’ll handle it.”

  On a soft exhale, he just nodded like he understood. But, shit, he didn’t really understand anything about her anymore.

  Chapter 6

  The show’s on!” Guy came bounding into the dining room where Jocelyn had made stacks of three different china patterns, not enough of any one to make a complete set. “You have to come and watch it with me,” he insisted.

  “I don’t have time for TV,” she said, scooping up one pile of plates to fit them in a box she’d found in the garage.

  “Not the blue roses!” Guy said, slapping his hands on his cheeks in horror. “I love them.”

  She looked up at him, still completely unused to every word that came out of his mouth. “Since when?” she asked.

  “Since…” His shoulders slumped. “I don’t know, I just do. They have sentimental value.”

  She almost choked. Her only memory of this wretched china pattern was when a bowl had gone sailing across the table one night because Mom had made mushroom soup.

  “They have no value,” she said, tamping down the memory.

  “But I really like flowers.”

  She looked up, the memory worming its way into her heart anyway, stunning her that same man who hated fucking mushrooms could really like flowers.

  “I’m sure you do,” she said. “But there aren’t enough to sell as a set, so I’m pitching these.”

  He shook his head like he just didn’t get that as he lifted one of the blue rose teacups off a saucer, dangling it precariously from his finger.

  She tensed, squaring her shoulders, her breath caught in her throat as she stared at the delicate china hooked to a thick forefinger. Any second. Any second and… wham! Whatever was in his hand would get pitched in the direction of the closest wall to make the loudest crash.

  But he just moved the cup left and right like a pendulum, a smile pulling at his face. “You gotta gift me.” He practically sang the words, his voice lifting playfully.

  For a second, she couldn’t speak. Just couldn’t wrap her head around this man. “Gift you?”

  “You know. I give up something precious and you gift me with something in return. A sofa. New carpet.” He sucked in a breath and dropped his mouth in complete joy. “One of those fancy flat TVs!”

  “I’m not going to—”

  Gingerly, he set the cup back on its saucer, making the tiniest ding of china against china. Then he held out his hand to her. “You need a little refresher on your own show, little miss.”

  “My own…” Clean House.

  “I’ve seen most of them before, ’cause they keep running the same ones over and over.” He closed his hand around her arms, his thick fingers lacking in strength but not determination. “But I don’t mind the repeats. Come on, let’s get to gettin’, as they say.”

  “As who say?”

  He clapped his hands and let out a laugh. “Very funny.”

  She followed him into the living room, where the TV blared a commercial. He gestured for her to sit on the sofa and settled into his recliner, waving the remote like a magic wand.

  “I’m holding on for dear life to this thing. The way you’re tossing stuff away you’re likely to hide it.”

  She sat on the edge of a heinous plaid sofa that she didn’t remember, something her parents—or Guy—must have bought after she left. Would Mom pick anything this ugly?

  “Relax,” Guy said, using the remote to gesture toward the sofa back. “It’s the fastest hour on TV. But you know that.”

  She didn’t relax, dividing her attention between a home improvement show hosted by a soulful, insightful, no-nonsense woman named Niecy—that must be who Guy called Nicey—and the man next to her.

  She really had to do more research on Alzheimer’s. Didn’t the disease turn its victims nasty and cranky? Or did it just change a person completely? Because this man was…

  No, she refused to go there. Leopards, spots, and all that.

  “Watch the show,” he insisted when he caught her studying him. “This is what you’re going to do for me.”

  Niecy Nash went about her business of taking control of a fami
ly’s mess, tossing the junk, selling what could be salvaged, then redecorating their homes, all the while helping her “clients” see what was wrong with their lives. Kind of like what Jocelyn did, only funnier.

  Was that what she was going to do for her father?

  Absolutely not. She already knew what was wrong with him—then and now. She wasn’t redecorating anything, just researching assisted-living facilities and solving this problem. It gave her something to do while she was here, anyway.

  “Cute show,” Jocelyn said, pushing up from the sofa following the big reveal at the end.

  “It’s more than cute,” Guy insisted. “It’s all about what makes people tick. You like that, don’t you?”

  “Made a whole career around it,” she said casually. “I better get back to the china.”

  “You gotta gift me for it.”

  “No, no.” She headed back into the dining room, armed with a little more knowledge of how to play his game. “She ‘gifts’ for things that have huge sentimental value. Half of a chipped china set has no sentimental value. No gifting.”

  “How do you know what has sentimental value to me?” he demanded, right on her heels.

  She stopped cold and he almost crashed into her. Very slowly she turned, just about eye to eye with a man who had once seemed larger than life, but gravity had shaved off a few inches, and surely guilt weighed on his shoulders.

  “I’m willing to bet,” she said without looking away, “that you can’t go through this house and find a single item that means anything at all to you.”

  She didn’t intend for the challenge to come out quite that cruel, but tears sprang from his eyes, surprisingly sudden and strong. “That’s just the problem,” he said, his voice cracking.

  She took a step back, speechless at the sight. Not that she hadn’t seen him cry; he could turn on the tears after an incident. He could throw out the apologies and promises and swear he’d never hit his wife again.

  And Mom fell for it every time.

  “What’s the problem?” she asked, using the same gentle voice she’d use on a client who was deluding herself over something. “Why are you crying?”

  He swiped his eyes, knocking his glasses even more crooked. “You don’t get it, do you?”

  Evidently not.

  “You don’t understand how some things matter,” he said.

  “Yes, I do,” she said, as ultra-patient as one of the crew on Clean House dealing with a stubborn homeowner. “Why don’t you answer a question for me first, Guy?”

  “Anything.”

  “Did you really live in this house?” Or did he just make it a living hell for the people who did? “Did you love anyone here? Make anyone happy? Build anything lasting?”

  “I might have.”

  “Did you?” she challenged, resentment and righteousness zinging right down to her toes. It was bad enough that he didn’t remember the misery he’d inflicted, but to twist the past into something happy? Well, that was too much. That went beyond the symptoms of a sad, debilitating disease and right into unfair on every level.

  Forget the past if that’s nature’s cruel punishment, but, damn it, don’t change the past.

  “I think I did,” he said weakly.

  “You think you did?” She swallowed her emotions, gathering up the sharp bits that stung her heart, determined not to let them hurt quite this much.

  “I don’t know,” he finally said, defeat emanating from every cell in his body. “I just don’t know. That’s why I’ve been so scared to throw anything away. I thought it might help me remember.”

  A wave of pity rose up, a natural, normal reaction to the sight of a helpless old man sobbing. Pity? She stomped it down, searching wildly for a mental compartment where she could lock away any chance of pity.

  She had no room in her heart for sympathy or compassion. Not for this man who had made her childhood miserable and stolen any hope of her having a normal life. With Will. With that big, strong, safe, handsome man who still made her knees weak and her heart swell.

  “Well, you have to give up that hope,” she said harshly, talking to herself as much as the old man in front of her. Without waiting to see his pained reaction, she turned to walk to the table, ready to finish this task, make order, and accomplish her very simple goal. She had to take charge of this situation, not let the situation take charge of her.

  “Why?” he asked, right on her heels. “Why do I have to give up that hope?”

  She ignored the question, scooping up the teacup and saucer.

  “Why should I give up hope?” he insisted, falling into a chair. “Is this like, you know, the part of the show where they make the person look inside their soul?”

  Oh, don’t go there, Guy. You won’t like what you see. “This isn’t a show,” she said stiffly. This is real life.

  “Is this like a pre-show? Where they get the people ready before the cameras come?”

  She could feel the threads of patience pulling, fraying, threatening to snap. God, was she as bad as her father? She’d always feared that horrible blackness was hereditary, but years of psych classes taught her she could overcome whatever ugliness she may have inherited from Guy.

  She took another calming breath and continued packing the china.

  “What should I do?” he asked.

  She looked up, mentally searching for a way to get through to him. “You should start to make new memories.” She slid four salad plates into the carton on the table and turned back to the buffet. “This will be a good change for you. You can replace the old stuff with new and better stuff.”

  In a home somewhere with people just like you.

  But she couldn’t say the words. Behind her, he was silent, no sniffling, no breathing. Oh, God. Was he about to blow? He was too, too quiet.

  Very slowly, she turned. His head rested on the table, his shoulders shuddering with silent sobs. “I want to remember,” he blubbered.

  Automatically, she reached for him, then jerked her hand away like she’d almost touched a hot surface. “Maybe you don’t,” she said simply. Maybe nature is doing you a favor, old man.

  “I really, really do.” He lifted his head, and his glasses slid down to the bottom of his teary nose, his eyes red, his lips quivering. “It’s all I want in the whole world, Missy. A single memory. One crystal-clear story of my past that doesn’t flash and fade before I can hold on to it and enjoy it.”

  She stared at him. “I… can’t help you.” Only that was a lie. She had so many memories, enough to fill up this house. She could tell him a lifetime of stories. Once upon a time there was a nasty man who had no control, a weak woman who’d given up control, and a scared little girl who lived for any shred of control she could muster.

  “Then make one up,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “That can be your gift, you know?” He sat up a little, an idea taking hold. “In exchange for throwing away my china, you gift me with a memory.”

  “But it wouldn’t be… real.” Or nice.

  He just lifted one brow, and, for a single, crazy second, she thought he knew exactly who he was talking to. Was that possible? She swallowed hard. Could he really know her, and he’d lied all this time? “Guy?”

  He nodded, excited, sniffing a little. “You have one? A memory?”

  “How could I?” she asked. “If I just met you?”

  “You’re so smart and kind,” he said. “And you’ve been through half my stuff. You did the whole kitchen. The drawers are very neat now, even that junky one with the batteries. Surely you know enough to gift me with one memory.”

  “Okay,” she agreed, looking around, taking in the remnants of their lives: a teapot her mother’s friend brought from England, a salt and pepper shaker set painted as Santa and Mrs. Claus, a set of yellowed lace doilies her mother had loved.

  The doily.

  Somewhere, in her head, a little gold lock turned on, an imaginary safety box where she’d tucked away th
e bad stuff, never to be pulled out and examined again.

  Until she had to.

  The box opened and there she saw the crystal vase perched on that very doily, stuffed with a vibrant bunch of gladiolas that Mary Jo Bloom had bought at Publix for just $3.99.

  “Four bucks,” she’d said with a giggle in her voice to her little girl. “He can’t get too mad about four dollars, can he?”

  Her mother had placed the vase on the kitchen table, foot-long stems popping with life and happiness.

  “Everyone should have fresh flowers in their life, don’t you think, Joss?”

  Jocelyn opened her eyes, barely aware she’d closed them, and stared at the man across the table from her, ignoring the expectant excitement in his eyes and seeing only the anger, the disgust, the self-loathing that he transferred to his family.

  “Do you remember the day you came home from work and your wife had fresh flowers on the table, Guy?”

  He shook his head slowly. “I’m sorry. What did they look like?”

  “They were gladiolas.”

  He lifted one of his hunched shoulders. “Don’t know what that is, Missy.”

  “They’re long-stemmed, bright flowers,” she explained. “They come in long bunches and they spread out like flowery arms reaching up to the sky, a bunch of ruffles for petals, in the prettiest reds and oranges you’ve ever seen.”

  He gasped, eyes wide, jaw dropped. A memory tweaked?

  “You came into the house and saw the flowers…”

  “All red and orange? Like long sticks of flowers?” He nodded, excitement growing with each word.

  “You wanted to know how much they cost.”

  “In a glass vase?” He hadn’t heard her, she could tell, as he pushed back the chair. “I know these flowers. I remember them!”

  “Do you remember what happened, Guy?”

  He almost toppled the chair getting up, making Jocelyn grip the table in fear. What was he going to do? Reenact the whole scene?

  “Wait here,” he said, lumbering out of the room.

  Did he want the memory or not? Didn’t he want to know about how he’d picked up that vase, screamed about wasting money, and thrown that bad boy across the linoleum floor, scattering water and flowers and one terrified child who tore under her bed and covered her ears?