Jones, Beverly R

by All Things Sacred (Lit) (Triskelion)

  “You’re just going to leave like this, in the middle of the night, without even saying goodbye.”

  Kendall jumped at the sound, a feeling of panic overwhelming her, her skin quivering not just from her fear of having been caught but from the sound of his voice. She turned and saw him standing in the archway that led to the living room, his body a black shape outlined by the faint glimmer of the porch light, his face hidden in the shadows, all unmistakably familiar to her. He must have been sleeping on the living room couch again. “I-I left a n-note,” she stammered.

  “A note?” Jackson moved from the archway into the foyer and stood in front of her in the darkness. “You think that’s all we deserve, a note from you?”

  “No,” she whispered, “I think you deserve much more than that. So much more. But this way is better for everyone.” Kendall reached for the doorknob again. “Goodbye, Jackson.”

  He slammed his palm against the door, preventing her from opening it. “Don’t leave like this. Not now,” he said, his voice low and raspy.

  “Jackson, please. I have to go. Cynthia’s probably waiting for me outside by now.”

  A guttural laugh sounded in his throat as he stared at her face in the shadows. “Cynthia? Tell me you’re kidding.”

  “I figured she’d be the one person who would gladly come pick me up, even in the middle of the night, and take me to the bus station.” Kendall pulled on the doorknob. “Now, please, let me go.”

  Jackson removed his palm from the door panel. “Fine,” he said to her evenly. “I’m tired of fighting you. You want to go, then go. I won’t stop you.”

  Kendall opened the door, then turned her face to look at him one last time. “Thank you for everything, Jackson. I’ll never forget you.” She stepped through the door out onto the front porch.

  Jackson shut the door behind her, then turned and leaned his back against it. Well, that’s it, then. It’s over now. She’s gone. He shut his eyes as he stood there, conjuring up thoughts of her. Visions of her standing under the oak tree appeared, her face smiling, a warm summer breeze blowing her dark auburn hair gently against her neck. He heard her laughter, rich and melodic, he saw her out in the garden searching for ripe tomatoes, saw her running in the rain, saw her lying across the bed looking up at him. Then a horrid vision of her screaming, a faceless man closing in on her.

  He opened his eyes then and turned and jerked open the front door. He looked across the front lawn and saw her toss her knapsack into the back seat of Cynthia’s car, then open the front passenger door. He was across the porch in two long strides, then down the steps. He ran across the grass to the idling car. She stood there beside the open car door, watching him as he approached her, a look of confusion on her face. Jackson slowed as he neared the car, then walked to the rear door, opened it and removed her knapsack and slung it over his shoulder.

  “Jackson, what are you—” she began, but her words caught in her throat as he lifted her and slung her over his shoulder with the knapsack.

  He pushed the car door shut with his foot as he bellowed, “Go home, Cynthia!” He turned then and walked purposefully toward the house, Kendall squirming over his shoulder.

  “Jackson, put me down!” she screamed. “For God’s sake, what are you doing? Put me down!”

  He ignored her pleadings as he carried her up the front steps, then across the porch. In one swift movement he carried her through the door and kicked it shut with the heel of his foot. He turned and locked the deadbolt, then continued on to her bedroom. He deposited her onto the bed and dropped her knapsack onto the floor. He stood looking down at her, breathing unsteadily from the emotional urgency he was feeling. He didn’t know what he should do next, he didn’t know what he should say. He just knew he couldn’t let her leave. He stared at her for another moment in the darkness as she sat up on the bed. He reached over and turned on the bedside lamp so that he could see her face, try to explain his way out of this impulsive thing he had just done. He saw the tears on her face in the lamplight.

  “Why did you do that?” she cried. She buried her face in her hands and sobbed. He heard her muffled words through her tears. “Why couldn’t you just let me go?”

  He sat on the bed next to her and leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees, his face turned away from her. “I couldn’t let you get on a bus and disappear,” he said quietly. “It isn’t safe.”

  “Isn’t safe?” she said angrily through her tears, sick of hearing the same old tired excuse, as she removed her hands from her face and looked over at him. Her eyes held an expression that seemed both irritated and futile. “Oh, stop it, Jackson. Just stop it. That’s what it always comes down to, doesn’t it? You’re always worried about my safety. Well, when did you become the police of all amnesiacs? You can’t tell me what to do. You’re not my—”

  He cut off her words as he turned and pressed his mouth to hers and kissed her. He still held his lips against hers as he murmured gruffly, “I’m not your what?” He kissed her again, pushing her down on the bed as he hovered above her. “I’m not your husband?” he asked hoarsely as his lips grazed her cheek, then moved again to her mouth. “Your husband’s a jerk.” He kissed her more deeply then as she struggled beneath him.

  “Jackson, stop this. Please stop this,” Kendall whimpered.

  He lifted his face from hers, breathing heavily, and asked, “Why? Why do you want me to stop? We just made love right here on this very bed this afternoon. Now you want to go tearing out of here and don’t want me to come anywhere near you. Why?”

  “Because,” she said, her voice reverberating as she continued to cry, “I don’t want to be here anymore. I just want to leave. I want to leave all of this behind me. I want to go home and I don’t ever want to see this place again.”

  “You’re lying,” he said as he leaned his face closer to hers. “You think you’re saving us from whoever’s out there posing some sort of threat. Well, what about what might happen to you? How can you be so selfish?”

  “Selfish?” she asked, dumbfounded, as she choked on her tears.

  “Yes, selfish. You just want to take off on some bus to God knows where and leave us here worrying about you every day. Don’t you realize how much we’ve all come to care about you? What do you think you’d be doing to us by disappearing?”

  “It’s not like I wasn’t going to let you know where I was or how things worked out, eventually.”

  “Eventually. And what were we supposed to do in the meantime?”

  “Go on with your lives just the way you were before I got here.”

  “That isn’t possible anymore.” The words came out before he was able to think them through, to weigh the consequences of what he was saying. He hesitated, trying to recover, then added, “Casey would go out of her mind if you left. She’s already worried to death about you. If you disappeared, she’d be fretting constantly and driving Tom and me crazy. Not to mention the fact we’d be forced to eat her cooking again.”

  “Oh, get off of me!” Kendall huffed as she pushed at his chest.

  Jackson refused to move, his arms still planted at her sides as he looked down at her. “I didn’t mean to make it sound like that. We all care about what happens to you. But you would break Casey’s heart if you left now. She wants you to stay here because you’re like family to her, and she doesn’t turn her back on family. She doesn’t allow family to face anything alone. It’s as much a need for her as it is for you. She needs you here. And you need to be here.”

  “Get off,” Kendall repeated.

  “Tom needs you here, too.”

  “Now you’re really getting ridiculous,” she said in exasperation. “Get off of me. I’ll walk to the bus station if I have to.”

  Jackson looked down at her, not moving an inch. She squirmed beneath him, grasping his arms in an attempt to move him aside. The muscles in his arms flexed as he pressed harder on the mattress. He watched her as she moved her head from side to side, using both hands now t
o try and disengage one of his arms. He took in every inch of her face, her lips pursed in a grimace, her brow furrowed, her eyes expressing both exasperation and a helpless need, as her tears began to well up again. He could smell the fresh scent of her hair as it whispered about her face in her struggle. She pushed at his chest again, but to no avail, his body immobile as a boulder. She continued to cry his name as she ordered him to get off, her tears returning in full force now.

  He finally rolled away from her and sat on the edge of the bed. Kendall slid off the bed in one fluid movement and walked to where her knapsack lay on the floor. She picked it up and hitched it onto one shoulder, then moved toward the bedroom door. “Goodbye, Jackson.” She brushed the hair from her face and swiped at her tears, her back to him.

  Jackson still sat on the bed, watching her every movement. She was going to leave him. He couldn’t let that happen, but he was unable to move, unable to say what he was feeling. He saw her reach for the doorknob. She wrapped her fingers around it and turned it to the left. She pulled the door open and his breath caught. “I need you,” he choked out in a faint whisper.

  She stood still, barely breathing, her hand resting on the doorknob. Kendall was unable to turn around at that moment, unsure of what he had said, afraid she had heard him wrong. The words stumbled from her mouth, “Wh-what did you say?” He remained quiet behind her. She slowly turned around to face him.

  He was silent for another moment, his eyes focused on hers, unwavering. He swallowed and breathed out a sigh as if he were releasing years of pent up desperation. “I need you, Kendall,” he repeated quietly. “Stay here for me.”

  She cried harder then. He rose from the bed and went to her. He pulled her head against his chest, his fingers lost in the curly wisps of her hair. He lowered his face next to hers and kissed her on the temple. She wrapped her arms around his neck and held onto him as if she were afraid of letting go. She cried into his shoulder. “I don’t want him to hurt you.”

  “I know, honey. I know that’s what you’re afraid of, but he’s not going to hurt me. Don’t you see that what you’re so afraid he may do to me, I’m even more frightened he might do to you? Stay here with me, Kendall.”

  He held her tightly as her body shuddered against his. She tried to quell her crying, her throat convulsing with each sob. He turned her face up to his and placed a hand on her cheek and rubbed away her tears with his thumb. He lowered his mouth to her trembling lips and kissed her gently. A choking moan sounded in her throat as she responded to him eagerly. He gripped her tighter and kissed her more deeply, his tongue finding the warm, sweet comfort of hers. He lifted her in his arms and carried her to the bed and laid her across the comforter. He hovered above her for a moment before leaning down and kissing her again, then lay down on the bed beside her, pulling her against him.

  She laid her head on his chest, her crying having subsided to quiet sniffles. She reached an arm across him and her hand rested on his bicep. The muscle flexed as he moved his arm to hold her more tightly. She felt comforted by the mere strength of him, safe and protected in his arms. She wished their circumstances were different. But then if they had been different, she never would have known him. She was merely glad that she had come to know this man, to feel this close to him, even if only for this one moment in time. She wanted to come back to him one day, if she could, but that would depend mainly on Jackson himself and what the future held for both of them.

  “If I stay here now, we can’t do this anymore, you know,” she said quietly.

  “I know,” he said. There were so many obstacles that prevented them from giving in to what they felt for each other. Her unsolved past. His possible fatherhood. His inability to believe in happy endings. The earth turning on its axis. “But you’ll stay?”

  “Yes, I’ll stay,” she whispered. “Just promise me that when it’s all over, if my past is worse than I could have imagined, or if—”

  “Or if what?”

  “If you’re the father of Cynthia’s baby,” she hesitated, “you won’t ask me to stay again.”

  He didn’t answer her right away. He didn’t believe Cynthia was pregnant, didn’t want to believe it. But he also didn’t know what Kendall would find out about her past or the impact that discovery might have on her and any decisions she may make. He suddenly understood that everything was out of his hands now. It always had been. He had no control over the outcome, not for her or for him. He could only protect her for as long as she was here, for as long as she would let him. He kissed the top of her head, then rested his chin there. “Okay,” he answered solemnly.

  They lay on the bed in silence, still embracing each other. He continued to hold her long after she had fallen asleep. He stared up at the faint orb of light cast on the ceiling from the bedside lamp. He gazed at it as if it were a moon shining down upon their own private world, a world that shut out all things over which he had no control. A world that consisted only of the thoughts he held onto at that moment, in this room, with Kendall lying in his arms. His gaze remained fixed on the ceiling moon, until his eyelids

  Chapter 18

  >“Cynthia, who were you just talking to? Sounded like you made some sort of appointment,” Robert Gamble asked his daughter as she returned the telephone handset to its cradle.

  “Just making a doctor’s appointment,” Cynthia answered. She wrote down the date and time of her appointment on a pad of paper, then sat fiddling with the pen.

  “You sick or something?”

  “No, I just haven’t been feeling well lately and thought I’d go for a routine check-up.”

  “Well, what’s wrong with you, girl?” Robert persisted.

  Cynthia sighed and gave him the only answer she knew would get him off her back. “Female stuff,” she announced as she turned and stared straight into her father’s face, challenging him.

  Robert Gamble turned away and made a grunting sound as he headed across the kitchen to the back door. “Well, I’m off to the Feed and Seed in Logan City. Have dinner ready by six.”

  “Oh, of course, sir. Shall I serve you on the veranda or would you prefer the ambience of the dining room by candlelight?” Cynthia smirked at him.

  “Don’t get smart with me, girl. You’re lucky I put a roof over your head and food in your belly. Not to mention all those fancy clothes you keep buying yourself.” Robert stopped as he opened the back door and turned to sneer at her. “I know what you’re after, but it ain’t goin’ to work. All the swanky clothes in the world won’t win you Jackson Coley,” he laughed.

  “Oh, what would you know?” Cynthia glared at him.

  “I’ve seen that woman he’s got staying with him.” He snickered. “That’s what I know.” Robert continued laughing as he stepped outside, slamming the kitchen door behind him.

  “Hateful old coot,” Cynthia muttered to herself. She’d show him. She would win Jackson Coley, all right. And she had more than a nice wardrobe to help her do it. Of course, she wasn’t exactly sure she had his baby growing inside of her to help her cause. But that didn’t matter, anyway. She had a better plan, one that didn’t include her being forced to have a baby. God, that was the last thing she wanted, but she had to make Jackson believe she was pregnant with his child, at least for the time being. If she could just stall him long enough for her to get Kendall out of the way. At first that had seemed like a difficult prospect, but she had help now. It was as if a miracle had landed right on her doorstep that day. But where was he now? She wasn’t sure what her next step should be until she heard from him again.

  A knock sounded at the back door, interrupting her thoughts. What now? Did the old coot forget his keys? Cynthia took her time walking to the door, stopping to rattle the dirty dishes in the sink, pretending she was in the middle of a chore. Let him stand there and wait. She slowly made her way to the back door and opened it, a ready smirk on her face.

  “Oh, it’s you,” she faltered.

  The sight of him standing there was near
ly as menacing as the first time he’d visited her, his stocky stature and unruly red hair nearly as daunting as the scowl he wore on his face. And what a face. It was a contradiction within itself.. The deep contours across his forehead and jaw might have appeared as attractive character lines on any other man, but on him they seemed to suggest an evil inside of him clawing to get out. His eyes were a deep blue, but instead of the hospitable kindness she thought she’d seen in them when they first met, now they suggested only anger. If she’d passed him unknowing on the street, Cynthia might have considered him handsome, could have even overlooked the spiky red hair. But she had already been witness to his threatening nature, and now he appeared as ugly as a gremlin. “What took you so long?” she asked impatiently.

  “I had to wait for your old man to leave, stupid,” he countered. “Or would you prefer that I sit down with both you and Daddy and discuss this?” He pushed past her and sat down at the kitchen table.

  Cynthia didn’t like being called stupid, but she wasn’t about to challenge this man. Lord knows what he might do. Besides, she needed him if she had any hopes of getting rid of Kendall. She joined him at the table, choosing the chair across from him. “She’s still over there. How long is this going to take?”

  He laughed at her as if she truly had no sense about her at all. “It’s not going to be that easy when they’ve got the place guarded like Fort Knox. I thought you said the guys were always away from the house during the day.”

  “They are. Well, they always have been, anyway. Must be something they’re temporarily working on near the house.”

  “Look, I’ve covered that place for days now. From that place in the woods you showed me that adjoins their property, I can see pretty much every movement. Those guys are always there, either inside the house or right near it. And who knows how many others are milling around that place? At one time or another, there seems to be someone driving from those fields to the house and back out again. It’s totally unpredictable.”