by Sey, Susan
She pushed to her feet, put a hand on Matty’s shoulder. “Listen, leave your mom to me. Don’t worry about her, or about painting, or any of that, okay? Just leave it me to.”
“What are you going to do?” Matty barked out a laugh. “You don’t even live here anymore.”
“I know. Just…trust me. There’s more going on than I can tell you right now. But you have to believe that I would never let anything bad happen to you.”
“I don’t think you’re in charge of that kind of thing.” The bleak knowledge in his eyes sliced her heart wide open. “But thanks.”
Chapter 28
THE NEXT DAY — Monday, midmorning, right on schedule — Addy pulled open the Wooden Spoon’s heavy glass door and pushed Matty inside. He’d been silent for the four block ride from the middle school where she’d picked him up, so the jingle and hum of Monday Brunch in full swing was a balm to Addy’s nerves. She didn’t care for Silent Matty; he worried her. She’d rather have Angry Matty back.
At least it was a pretty day finally. The calendar had just rolled over to June, and the North Shore was celebrating. The sky was brilliantly blue, and a golden sun flooded the street with warmth and welcome. Even so, Addy pulled the door carefully shut behind her, always mindful of the unpredictable nature of lake-shore weather.
“Packed today,” Addy said cheerfully to Matty’s back, then grunted as somebody’s massive purse caught her in the midsection.
“Gosh.” Matty flicked her an ironic eyebrow. “Wonder why.”
“Well, everybody loves Monday Brunch.”
“They’re not here for brunch.” He stretched his lips in a ghastly smile. “They’re here for the show.”
“What show?” She bounced to her toes to scan the packed room, and just caught a glimpse of Jax’s messy chestnut head in the back corner booth. Without warning, her brain provided an instant replay of all that unruly hair between her fingers, that hot mouth on hers. Her heart bumped predictably and she dropped back to her heels. He loved her, she thought dizzily. He’d said so. She still hadn’t quite wrapped her mind around that — what he meant by it, what she believed about it, where they went from there. They hadn’t had much time to discuss it.
They would, she told herself firmly. Just as soon as everything settled down a little, they’d talk. They’d figure things out. Except that when they did, he’d likely want to know how she felt about him. Was she in love with him, too?
She didn’t know. How could she? Once upon a time, she’d thought she was in love with Diego. If she’d thought that was love, but also thought this was love, she obviously had no idea what the word even meant. Which was why she wanted to know exactly what Jax thought it meant before she decided what to call the desperate hunger, the sweet peace, and the uncertain longing he inspired in her.
They’d figure it out, she assured herself again. Just as soon as they had enough time to concentrate on it.
“They’re here for the Davis show,” Matty told her. “The one where an arsonist tries to burn the town down over the weekend, then he and his family show up for Monday Brunch like nothing happened.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “Nobody thinks you lit those fires.” She snagged a handful of his Captain America t-shirt and began excusing her way toward the back booth, towing him behind her. She smiled at Josh Martin, who was back to busing tables although on one of those walking cast/boot things. Huh. Eli must’ve made enough cash to resupply and move on. She wondered vaguely if Gerte had ever pried his life story out of him. “Everybody knows you were with Peter. He said so.”
“I know he did,” Matty murmured. “But do we believe him?”
“Of course we believe him. Why would he lie about something like that?” She paused, distracted by the glass bakery case at her elbow. “Oh, man,” she said. “Look at that, would you?” She pointed her chin at a small army of Gerte’s mile-high pies. “Okay, forget looking. Smell that.” She pulled in a lungful of warm, butter-scented air and grinned. “Let’s have pie for brunch. Want to? I think we—”
She was going to say deserve it except that she was suddenly talking too loudly. Either that or the room had gone quiet.
She broke off and glanced around. Coffee cups were frozen beneath avid eyes, loaded forks teetered halfway to open mouths. It was like they were in a movie and somebody had hit the pause button. Addy followed the stares to Matty — now conveniently center stage — who scowled at his boots.
“Are you sure, Addy?” he mumbled. “Are you sure we’re all just taking Peter’s word for it?”
Addy smiled brightly at their audience and released her strangle hold on Captain America to slip a more companionable arm through Matty’s stiff one. Somebody hit the play button again and the hum of brunch in progress came back on line, though slightly muted, slightly watchful. “Yes,” she said through her teeth. “We are absolutely all taking Peter’s word on this.”
He only hunched deeper into his t-shirt and fell silent until they arrived at the Davis booth. Jax came to his feet.
“There you are,” he said. “I was starting to think you weren’t coming.”
Matty slid into the booth next to Georgie and smiled acidly. “What? And miss the chance to show off my scarlet letter?”
Addy slid into the booth beside Bianca and Jax sat down next to her.
“Oh, please,” Jax said. “You’re no Hester Prynne.”
“Of course he is,” Georgie said. “Did you hear the crickets when people spotted him? I thought for a minute there he was going to have to make a speech or fight a duel or something.”
“Oh, let them talk.” Bianca tucked the menus out of the way and leaned forward to pat Matty’s knotted hands. “Small minds, small conclusions.”
“I don’t know, Mom.” Georgie toyed idly with a spoon. “Jax hasn’t been this busy since Walter tried to install his own deep fat fryer at the Sugar Rush. Three fires in two weeks is kind of a record around here. And Matty’s right next to all of them?” She threw him a sharp grin. “Anything you want to tell us, little brother?”
“Besides screw off?”
Bianca sighed. “Georgie, leave your brother alone.”
Gerte arrived at the table, a loaded tray riding her forearm. Addy smiled at her, braced for the coffee she didn’t order and would force herself to drink. But Gerte didn’t deal out the coffee. She didn’t slide Matty an extravagant hot chocolate loaded up with those bittersweet chocolate curls Addy would envy all day. She met Addy’s smile with cold fury and said, “You’re not welcome here.”
“Excuse me?” Bianca slid her bright blue cheaters to the top of her head, and regarded Gerte with haughty disbelief.
“You heard me. You’re not welcome here,” Gerte said, her voice taut and trembling. “None of you.”
“Is that so?” Bianca tipped her head and gave the other woman a cool study. Color flashed into Gerte’s soft cheeks and she drew herself up with rigid dignity.
“We can’t stop you from putting porn in your gallery window, Bianca,” she said tightly. “If you don’t care what it’ll do to the rest of us, there’s no reasoning with you, and I guess that’s your business. But this?” She threw her free hand out to the side, took in the cozy little shoe-box of a diner, the sugar-laden air, the companionable clink of flatware and coffee cups. “This is my business. The Wooden Spoon has been in my family for three generations. We’ve been here nearly as long as you have, and we might not be rich but we’ve put everything we had into building something here. Something your privileged little monster—” She shot an ugly glare toward Matty. “—might have burned to the ground in a fit of temper. So do whatever you please, Bianca, but get out of my restaurant.”
Lainey appeared at her mother’s elbow, all flour-coated hands and pink cheeks, as if she’d sprinted there from the kitchen. “Mom, stop.” She turned a stricken face to the table. Addy stared back, stunned. “I’m sorry, she’s distraught. It was a terrible weekend, we haven’t slept. She doesn’t m
ean—”
“Don’t tell me what I mean,” Gerte bit out coldly, her eyes never leaving Bianca’s. “I know just what I mean, and I mean what I say. Get out.”
Lainey put a miserable hand on Gerte’s shoulder but dropped her eyes and stayed silent.
“As I said,” Bianca announced in a clear, carrying voice. “Small minds, small conclusions. Come along, children. Let’s go.”
Matty scrambled out of the booth, followed much more leisurely by Georgie. Jax, Addy and Bianca all rose from the other side. Jax touched Lainey’s elbow and she sent him a grateful glance. Bianca only put her nose in the air and sailed toward the door. Matty stalked after her. Georgie shook back that silvery sheet of hair and began to follow, but stopped in front of Gerte.
“Matty was with Peter,” she said softly.
“So he says,” Gerte sneered.
“You think he’d lie like that?” Georgie smiled pleasantly, as if amused by the whole situation. “To the police? For me?”
Gerte met her gaze with hard eyes. “Why wouldn’t he lie for you? About you? We’ve been doing it for years, this whole town, and none of us is even trying to marry your money.”
Georgie’s beautiful face went momentarily blank, then she tossed back her head and laughed, a merry chime of silvery bells. “I’ll give you credit for saying that to my face, Gerte. You’re the only person in this town who ever has. Good for you.” She patted the woman’s plump arm. Gerte drew back like Georgie was contagious. “That said? Mom’s totally right about you.” She shook her head, hooked an elbow through Addy’s numb arm and drew her toward the door. “Small minds, small conclusions.”
Jax fell in behind them and Addy let Georgie tow her through the crowd. She was grateful for the guiding hand, really. Considering that she couldn’t feel her feet, she doubted she could have gotten there on her own.
It was all falling apart, she realized dumbly. The town she cherished, the family she adored, the social structure she’d built her life around? It was all crumbling. Her eyes flew frantically over the crowd, over all the familiar faces watching their departure with eyes that skated away from hers every time she tried to connect.
Only one set of eyes caught and held, and they were a cool, knowing hazel. The same color as Jax’s, down to the last fleck.
Addy held Nan’s gaze as Jax opened the door and let Georgie sail through. Addy faltered, struck suddenly by the question — the offer? — burning in that stare. She didn’t have to accept Bianca’s reign, she realized slowly. She had another option. She could stay here, throw in her lot with the rest of the town. Rally against porn on Main Street, betray Bianca’s plan, tell Matty he wouldn’t have to paint his mother a masterpiece. Keep Diego’s ugly new paintings in a dark garage for the rest of her natural life.
She lifted her chin high and sailed onto the sidewalk after Georgie. It wasn’t even a choice. Family was family, and the Davises were hers, for better or for worse.
She caught the tiny disappointed shake of Nan’s head just before the door whispered shut behind Jax. They stood on the sidewalk for three suspended moments, then the Wooden Spoon erupted in applause behind them. Raucous, spontaneous, hooting applause.
They were cheering, Addy realized, for their hero.
For the woman with enough courage to say what everybody else had been thinking. For the David who’d finally slung that killing stone at Goliath.
They were cheering for Gerte.
“Well, that was different,” Jax said.
“Understatement,” Georgie muttered.
“Please.” His mother fluttered a dismissive hand. “Gerte’s been waiting years to throw a scene like that. It’ll blow over.”
Jax wasn’t so sure about that but he trailed his mother in silence as she turned and strolled toward the gallery. She fitted a key in the lock and twisted.
“Jax,” she said, “do you mind getting Matty back to school? If you hurry, he can still catch lunch in the cafeteria.”
“I can walk,” Matty said dully.
“I’ll take you,” Addy said but he’d already turned on one big boot and stalked off in the direction of the middle school. Jax squinted after him.
“I’m going to call the school in half an hour,” he announced to nobody in particular and followed his mother into the gallery. “If he’s not in class—”
“He will be,” Addy said with a resigned certainty that only added to the worry brewing in Jax’s gut.
“How do you know?”
“He’s done making trouble.” She drifted to a stop in the center of the gallery, right next to Diego’s Angel. She gazed up at the idealized version of herself with unutterable weariness. “He told me so yesterday. If he can’t be talented, he can at least be cooperative.”
“He said that?” Jax stared in disbelief while worry tried to morph into fear.
“I think he meant it, too.” Addy said, and brought her eyes to Jax’s. “What teenaged boy talks like that, Jax?”
“They don’t.”
“I know. Something’s wrong with him.” She shifted that look to Bianca who met it with unusual inscrutability. “He wouldn’t tell me what it was when I talked to him yesterday, but something’s not right. He’s not telling us something.”
“Don’t be dramatic,” she said lightly. “Leave that to Matty. He’s thirteen; he’s allowed.” She tucked her purse in the desk drawer and fluttered her hands at them. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. I said it will blow over, and it will. It always does. Now go away, you two. You need to get back to work, and so do Georgie and I.” She offered him a cheeky smile and headed for the long white table dividing the back half of the gallery into two promenades. She gazed lovingly down at the unframed canvases spread across the table. The masterworks, he saw, his stomach souring. Addy’s secret paintings. Every bruise Diego had put on her soul, captured in oil and blood. Bianca sighed happily. “We have a lot of porn to frame.”
Incredulous fury shot down his spine, and his hands clenched into automatic fists. “No.”
Bianca frowned at him. “I’m sorry, what?”
His fists were throbbing at his sides so he shoved them into his pockets where they’d be safe. He hoped. He turned to Addy, who gazed back at him, her face smooth as milk, her eyes remote as Jupiter. “You’re okay with this?” he asked. “You’re going to let her frame up the train wreck of your marriage and lob it at the town like a grenade?”
“Of course she is.” Bianca made a disapproving noise and went back to fawning over those damn paintings. “This is astonishing work. It represents Diego’s potential in glorious flower and she’s not going to allow pedestrian concerns about the content — yours or anybody else’s — to prevent the world from—”
“That’s not your decision to make, Mom.”
Bianca paused. “Excuse me?”
“Those paintings aren’t yours to show.” Jax didn’t take his eyes away from Addison. Couldn’t. “They’re Addy’s. And I can’t believe she’d want to show them.” He gazed down into her wide, unblinking eyes. “You don’t want to show them, Addy.” He sounded…desperate. Angry. Half insane. “Do you?”
She hesitated. “They’re masterworks,” she said finally, and Jax knew with a sick pang that she was thinking bank accounts. Not hers, though. His family’s. “I hid them because I didn’t want you all to know the truth about what my marriage had become. But now that you do know—” She shrugged. “I don’t care what anybody else thinks of them, or of me. You’re the only ones who matter to me. You’re my family.”
“And we will be whether you show them or not.” Fear bit into the edges of his anger, along with a bleak realization. His love, no matter how strong, might not be enough to break the spell Diego and his family had cast on her vulnerable heart all those years ago. She was still convinced that their love was more than she deserved, that her place in their family was conditional. That every day of her life as a Davis was a campaign for re-election and she had to win it. “At least I will
be. I can’t speak for her—” He hooked a thumb toward his mother. “—but I love you, Addison. I’m in love with you, and it’s not because you’re Diego’s Angel. And it’s not because you could make the family a pile of money selling tickets to the implosion of your marriage.” She flinched but he barreled on, desperate to get through to her. To make her see. “It’s because you’re Addison.”
“Jax, be reasonable.” She stretched out a hand to him, and he seized it. Her diamond bit into his palm. Diego’s ring, he thought dully. She’d never taken it off. Pain-laced fear twisted inside him. What if she never did? What if she simply couldn’t? “They’re just paintings.”
“Like hell they are. They’re your history, Addison. They’re the worst chapter of your life. They’re private. And every time I look at them — because they’re a goddamn train wreck and I can’t not look — I feel ashamed. Like I’m seeing something I shouldn’t. Something I wish I hadn’t seen. Something I looked away from for years because it was your private pain. And now I’m watching like it’s television. We all are.” He heaved in a breath, and it felt hot in his lungs. Thin. “And you want to invite the world? Don’t do it, Addy.” Jax knew he was begging. He didn’t care. “Please just don’t.”
She only gazed at him, her eyes shiny with tears and full of apology. Acid backed up his throat, and it tasted bitter. Like defeat. Like failure.
“Okay, then. That’s your decision, I guess.” He lifted the hand he still held, let that giant diamond shatter the light. “I do love you, Addy. I probably always will.” He dropped her hand, his heart screaming inside him. “But I don’t think I can love you enough for both of us.”
Chapter 29
ADDY WATCHED IN disbelief as Jax turned away from her and walked stiffly out the door. Agony lapped gently at her, from her knees to her hair. She barely felt Georgie’s hand steering her to the nearest chair, or Bianca’s little nudge that folded her into it.
