Mornings on Main

by Jodi Thomas

  Only Connor had known how important it was to her, and he’d wanted to share her music.

  The old house creaked in the wind and Jillian swore she heard footsteps on the tiny landing of the second floor. The ghost was restless, rattling, moaning through the cracks.

  Making one last cup of herbal tea, she rushed up the stairs and disappeared into her room. As she undressed she thought what Connor would do, would say, if he were with her now. He was a gentle man, a kind man, but there was deep passion in him, as well.

  The thought that she’d probably never know made her cry. How many years did he have to be gone before she stopped missing her father? He could find her if he looked; she’d written how to contact her in the letter she’d left in Oklahoma City. But she had no way of finding him. He’d left no trail. No clue. No way.

  She’d always believed he loved her even though he’d never said the words. But now, she considered the possibility that raising her had been no more than a responsibility he’d promised someone, maybe her mother, that he’d do.

  Sleep seemed impossible tonight. When she closed her eyes, she could almost see her father’s hand covering her little fingers. He rarely hugged her, but he’d pat her hand and tell her not to worry. With her eyes closed, she could still see his first finger shorter than all the others, the nail gone, the scar zigzagging across the tip.

  For once she tried to remember every part of him. His hair was black as coal, with a touch of gray by the time she was in high school, and he always seemed sad. He was older than most kids’ dads, and his eyes reminded her of rainy days. She never saw him read, and he rarely drank more than a few beers around her, but sometimes on weekends, he’d leave her on Saturday night. He’d be home when she woke up on Sunday, but he’d always say he didn’t feel good.

  She’d spend the day trying to be quiet and he spent it napping in front of the TV. Then Monday, he’d be well. He’d send her to school and he’d go to work. As far as she could remember, he never missed a day’s work. He only had Sunday sickness now and then.

  She lay on her bed, thinking of how different her dad was from Connor. Books say a woman looks for a man like her father, but Jillian didn’t believe that. In her case, it was the opposite. If she were looking for a man, she’d want a man who cared.

  Her dad hadn’t cared for anyone. Not even her. Maybe he was born that way, or maybe it had been beat out of him early in life. His rules had taught her survival, but he hadn’t taught her how to love.

  She turned on the lamp by her bed and looked through one of his tiny logbooks. Dates, some smudged as if they’d melted off the page with time. Zip codes in one long single file with slash marks lining up beside them. Only not four up and one across, counting in fives—these tiny slashes were in groups of six with the seventh going sideways. He was counting weeks.

  The covers of both books were water-spotted and oil-stained from a working man’s hands. They weren’t something he valued or treasured. Dates, when they were there, were in months and days, not any year.

  She flipped to her laptop page where she kept her log. All by dates, including year. All days since she’d left college were logged and accounted for. All places she’d stopped even for a night were listed. Those first few years she’d traveled wherever she wanted, loving the places where music was in the air. Warm climates in the winter. The northern states in the summer. Then she migrated to the bigger cities where the money was better and she could always get lost in a crowd. Museums, art galleries and concerts filled her free time.

  But the past few years she’d followed her father’s trail. She doubted, at his age, he was still working the fields. He was over sixty now. But many of the early codes were small towns, telling her he must have been comfortable there. She picked the ones close to Oklahoma City. Who knows, maybe he’d finally settled somewhere and she’d just bump into him one day.

  Not likely.

  She wasn’t even sure what she was looking for exactly. Her father? What would she say to him if she saw him? Her mother? The one who left her at the hospital the day after she was born? No great love there. Maybe all she was looking for was some link to the past. One place to say she came from. Not a person at all.

  Belonging nowhere could slowly erode a person’s soul.

  22

  Connor walked through the quiet rooms of his house. Sunnie was sound asleep with all her stuffed animals crowded around her. They’d been on the shelves in her closet for years, then her mother died and one by one they’d somehow found their way back to her bed.

  He tugged a blanket over her shoulder, knowing it was long past the time when she needed tucking in.

  Gram was downstairs sound asleep. The night nurse, with a book spread out over her ample belly, was snoring.

  As he walked from room to room, he knew he would not be sleeping tonight. Too much on his mind.

  Finally, he slipped out the back door and drove the silent streets in his old pickup. He knew who lived in almost every house. He knew their names and where they worked. With some of the people, he felt like he knew their life stories, and a few, their secrets.

  He could name a hundred others who’d moved away. Kids who went to college and never came back. Couples who retired and moved out to a lake community or a few towns over to be with their grandchildren. He felt like he knew them all, except Jillian James. She’d shared more tonight than she ever had, but he didn’t think she would again.

  Turning down Main, he parked in front of his office. If he couldn’t find out about her, maybe he could find the father she kept asking about. For some reason she must believe that he stopped in Laurel Springs thirty years ago.

  Maybe he had.

  Connor walked through his office to the stacks in the back. Births and deaths had been logged since the paper started and, thanks to his last assistant, they were on the computer. It wouldn’t be that hard to find Jefferson James if he was here thirty years ago. He’d search the year before and the year after, as well.

  First, birth records. No Jillian James. New homeowners, nothing. Lists of people who joined clubs, churches, the chamber of commerce, the historical society. All blank.

  He tried deaths spanning her lifetime. There were several Jameses, but neither Jillian nor Jefferson were listed under survivors. He tried her mother’s name. Marti, Margaret, Marguerite, Martha, and a dozen others that might be shortened to Marti. No marriage license. No deaths. No one by that name ever graduated from high school in Laurel Springs. Or been arrested. Or divorced.

  Two hours passed. Three.

  Finally, on a lark, he dug up the article on the rodeo when he was seven. Nothing.

  He tried the year he was six. Bingo. His father had written a detailed account of the rodeo including a calf roper who’d lost the tip of his first finger. Jefferson James. Hometown unknown. Employee of Phillips Petroleum.

  Connor grinned. He’d found her father. It wasn’t much, but for at least one day before she was born, her father had been in Laurel Springs. Fighting the urge to go wake her up and tell her, he made two copies of the article and headed home.

  As usual, he circled through the abandoned part of town. If anyone was there, he might see some sign. Even a flashlight would be easy to spot.

  The place was dark and unwelcoming as always. No movement.

  Connor drove, turning his headlights down every alley. Nothing. It occurred to him that he wasn’t sure what he’d do if he did see someone. There was a chance any person living in the shadows might be armed, and Connor had never carried a weapon in his life.

  Maybe he should talk to the sheriff and ask him to drive through. “No,” Connor said aloud. This was his property. His problem. The way stories spread in a small town, within two weeks they’d have dozens of kids combing through the building looking for a ghost, and someone might get hurt.

  He’d deal with this problem, if there r
eally was a problem, on his own.

  When he made it back to the house, he was so tired, he crashed on the couch where he could see Gram sleeping in the next room. He liked her here, but he knew as soon as she was mobile, she’d be back in her apartment at the retirement home. Gram was independent. Even when Melissa died, she’d go back to her place every night after Sunnie was asleep and be back in the kitchen cooking breakfast when Sunnie came down the stairs.

  As Connor drifted into unconsciousness, he pulled Jillian into his arms. She was there with him in his dreams. He would hold her all night long.

  A few hours later, laughter woke him up.

  “Dad, you need to slow down. The wild life must be getting to you.”

  Connor rolled and almost tumbled off the couch. He groaned and opened one eye.

  For a second he thought the devil’s angel was staring down at him. Tall and lean, dressed in black and chains, fiery streaks of red in her hair, huge black circles around pale eyes.

  He scrubbed his face. No devil, just his daughter. “Morning, Sunnie.”

  “Dad, you really have to start taking care of yourself, or you’ll age so fast I’ll have to quit college and move in to take care of you.”

  “I do live with you.” He slowly stood. “How about skipping college and just taking on the job of taking care of your old man right now?”

  “No, Dad, I live with you. I go to school. You go to work. I’m not ready to change roles.”

  “All right. I guess I’ll shower and go to work. Any chance you’d cook me breakfast while I dress?”

  She looked put out, but she nodded. “All right. But don’t take too much time. You have to take me to school in half an hour.”

  Gram laughed from the dining room, then smiled when they turned and saw her standing. The nurse was right behind her, and Gram was leaning on a walker, but she was standing.

  Connor and Sunnie both took a step toward her, but she held up her hand. “I’m fine. I’ve been practicing all week. One step at a time. This morning I plan to help with breakfast, and then I’ll probably nap the rest of the day.”

  She took one step toward the kitchen. “Now don’t either of you tell Benjamin I can cook or he’ll want pancakes for breakfast.”

  Sunnie just stood staring at her dad. Big tears rolled down her cheeks.

  Connor moved to Gram and held the swinging door for her. “Gram, Benjamin died when I was a little kid.”

  She looked confused for a moment, then smiled. “Oh, that’s right. I forgot for a moment. It seems like I just talked to him yesterday.”

  The nurse took over and Sunnie pulled it together enough to start asking questions about how to make an omelet.

  Gram remembered every detail.

  Connor climbed the stairs, feeling like a boulder had replaced his heart. For a moment last night, he’d thought he might pack up and leave with Jillian. He’d dreamed of seeing the world. He’d thought he might just travel with her. For a few weeks, a month, forever.

  But that was just a fantasy. He couldn’t leave his daughter, or his grandmother, or even the town. People depended on him.

  He couldn’t, wouldn’t fly away. He hadn’t when Melissa told him she was pregnant or when his parents died, leaving everything in a mess, and he wouldn’t now. It didn’t matter how much he wanted to. He would stay.

  An hour later Sunnie had been dropped off at school, his gram was napping and Connor was in his office. Since the accident, he’d left things for the city undone. He had calls to make, letters to sign, and proposals to draw up.

  The book he’d been working on would have to wait. Nothing new.

  An hour later, the fire chief, a big guy named Bob Stevenson, marched into Connor’s office, complaining that Joe Dunaway wanted all kinds of changes to the district—streetlights, new fire hydrants, road work.

  When Jillian walked in Connor jumped up, hoping to be rescued. Once the chief started talking, it seemed like hours could drift by without Bob even taking time to breathe.

  She hesitated, halfway to his city business desk, when she saw he had company. He found the shy way she lowered her head and let her midnight hair cover her face irresistible.

  Connor stood politely and introduced her formally to the chief but made no effort to get close to her. Even looking at her made him feel like a diabetic staring at a chocolate layer cake.

  She took her cue from him and said she didn’t mean to bother him but wasn’t sure what to do with an order that had been delivered. Gram must have placed the restocking order several weeks ago and now three huge boxes of new supplies for the shop were cluttering up the store.

  Connor knew what she wasn’t saying. Why would they need an order of new fabric if the store was going to be closing?

  The police chief answered first. “I’ll be glad to help you move them, little lady. Just as soon as I finish filling in the mayor on what’s been going on.”

  Connor almost laughed out loud. Jillian had asked for direction, not help, and at her height no one would mistake her for a little lady.

  Part of him wanted to say, “Send everything back,” but he couldn’t, not yet. “Just give me the bill, Jillian. I’ll cover it. Thanks for letting me know, though. I’ll call the company direct concerning future orders.”

  He’d been managing Gram’s personal accounts since she’d moved into the Acres. He might as well start handling the shop’s, as well. Although, from the looks of her ledgers for the past year, she’d stopped writing checks and started simply using her debit card. There had been weekly deposits made, as always, but she hadn’t bothered to log any into the ledger.

  Jillian said goodbye to the fire chief as she handed Connor the invoice. All very formal.

  Connor didn’t look into her eyes. He couldn’t have watched her walk away if he’d stared into those eyes.

  She was already back inside the shop by the time he remembered the rodeo article.

  The fire chief jumped back into their conversation, but Connor was only halfway listening.

  The day was going from bad to worse, he feared.

  23

  Sunnie swore if she walked into school with her head on fire no one would notice. Not one person had commented on the red stripes she’d spent an hour painting into her hair this morning. Not even Gram.

  Maybe she’d gone wild so many times she’d established a new norm. If so, she might as well give up. She’d gone from being shocking to predictable.

  Besides, Gram didn’t count on the observation scale. She still thought her dead husband was alive and just forgot to come home. She probably thought Sunnie was born with candy cane hair.

  But Dad should have at least complained. While eating the great omelet she made, he could have asked how she did the coloring job. Shown some interest. Sunnie grabbed a juice and a granola bar from the snack machine and headed for her usual place to eat lunch. If she was going to pout, she might as well be cold, too.

  The day was as dreary as her mood. Damp and windy. She found an out-of-the-way bench in the atrium where no one, unless they were really searching, would find her.

  Sunnie wanted to give some serious thought to dropping out of school while she ate. A nitwit in her English class said that at sixteen you could take a test called the GED and, if you passed, it would be just like a high school diploma.

  Made sense to Sunnie. Why learn more in high school than was necessary? She could hang for a while and maybe give college a try in a year or so. Or maybe just travel. She’d talked to Jillian and considered that life on the road might just be perfect. No ties, no have to list, no one to judge you or depend on you. Just float around, wherever the wind takes you.

  Another goal Sunnie had was never to work. That was boring. Nine-to-five, five days a week. That left, like, no time. She wanted to be free to do what she wanted, when she wanted. She’d mentioned he
r plan to Dad over breakfast, and he’d simply buttered his toast and said, “Good luck with that.”

  He obviously didn’t understand freedom.

  “There you are,” a low voice said from behind her.

  Sunnie almost tumbled off her bench. When she turned, Reese stood a foot away holding a tray full of food. He looked better, if going from a one to a two on a scale of ten could be considered improvement. His clothes were clean. His left eye was slightly open and blood didn’t seem to be dripping from anywhere.

  “Mind if I share your bench?”

  She thought of saying yes, she did mind, but he looked so beat up. It was hard to keep from staring, much less turn him down. The whole student body probably voted to kick him outside of the cafeteria while they ate.

  She was a sucker for the guy. “It’s a free country. Sit where you want to but we’re not having lunch together, remember. We just happen to be sitting on the same bench. I always eat alone.”

  “Fair enough.” He lowered slowly and put the tray between them.

  “You all right?” she asked. “You’re moving about as fast as Gram.”

  “I got bruises in places that don’t show.” When she didn’t ask, he added, “You want to see?”

  “No.”

  “Suit yourself, but a person could live their whole life without seeing bruises where I got bruises.”

  She didn’t want to talk about it. “You always eat that much food?”

  “Yeah. I work after school most days and don’t get a chance to eat anything until after dark. Today I’m off, but I filled the tray out of habit. My dad says he can’t stand to look at me, so no work.”

  After a moment, he added, “I could share, if you like. You can have anything on the tray but my cookie.”

  She pulled her legs up on the bench and looked at him over her knees. “I want that cookie.”

  “Nope.” He offered her half his sandwich.

  “I’ll trade you my nut bar.”