“I’ll escort you to your car,” he says as we exit the restaurant.
“Thank you for the escort,” I tease, grinning.
He shrugs as he moves to the outside of the sidewalk, ensuring I’m walking on the inside.
“It’s not like I could say I’ll walk you to your car.”
My body stiffens, and I stop short, turning to him. He’s wearing a grin.
“Did you just make a joke about not being able to walk?”
He glances up, his eyebrows creasing as a quizzical expression overtakes his face. “I think I did.”
Oddly, I burst out into laughter, as does he. A couple of passersby look at us as if we’re crazy, but I don’t care about them. Something feels as if it lifts in the thickness of the air around Mark and me.
“Trust me, J, it’s not the first joke I’ve made since being in this chair, and it sure as shit won’t be the last.”
“Still a potty mouth, too.”
He snickers. “Thank Connor for that. He still curses like a sailor.”
I laugh, but just as I work up the nerve to ask more questions about him and his brother, we arrive at my car.
“Thanks for dinner.” That sounds too much like what you say on a date, but I can’t think of anything else to say.
“No sweat. The company pays for it anyway,” he answers, reminding me the only reason we’re here is because we’re working together.
Good reminder. I need to keep that in mind.
“Oh, here, you forgot these,” he says, trying to hand me the tin of cookies that remained in his lap since we exited the restaurant.
Holding up my hands, I shake my head. “I was serious when I said they’re yours to keep. Please, enjoy them.”
He pauses, taking a moment to assess me with his gaze before lowering the cookies to his lap. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
We linger for what feels like one moment after another. I should get in my car and drive off, pretending as if nothing more than a working dinner between two colleagues occurred, but my stupid heart is my downfall. Always has been, especially where Mark is concerned.
“Jackie?”
My heart hammers in my chest, wondering what his next words will be.
“Yes?”
He clears his throat before motioning with his head toward my car. “Get in your car.”
I nod because that’s the right thing to do. Yet, my legs refuse to move. I continue to stand there, staring at him, wishing for more. What more, I can’t define right now, but something more than just this fleeting moment.
Mark makes the first move, moving closer and reaching around me to pull my car door open. “Get in,” he commands, though his voice is slightly above a whisper.
This time, my body does respond, and I turn to get in the car. Once there, however, I can’t simply let the night end just like that. Instinctively, I reach for Mark’s hand. He doesn’t instantly pull away as I fear. Instead, there’s a moment of pause between us. Something heated, pulsating, and familiar passes through the air between us.
He stares into my eyes, searching, as he used to do sixteen years earlier. I do my best to hide my secrets without looking away.
Then it ends there.
Mark pulls his hand away and moves back enough to push my door closed. I give him one final nod before turning my car on and driving off into the night.
“It’s for the best,” I whisper over and over to myself. Not allowing myself to go searching for something that should’ve died a long time ago is for the best. For both me and for Mark.
Chapter 8
“‘Morning, Mama,” I say cheerfully as I enter the kitchen the following Saturday morning.
Despite how I keep telling myself that it’s not good for me to think too much about Mark O’Brien outside of work, I can’t help it. It feels as if some sort of breakthrough has been made at dinner the other night. Though we didn’t see one another in person yesterday, since it was a Friday, we talked over the phone. Sure, most of the conversation revolved around the merger, but Mark also interjected it with telling me he nearly had to beat Suzette off with a stick to keep from eating the rest of his tin of cookies.
I laughed as he told me he went to Desiree’s website and ordered another tin of her mixed cookie order. When I asked if he planned on sharing with his co-workers or his brother, he responded with a resounding, “Hell no. I’ll pass her information along, though, and they all can order their own damn cookies. These are just for me.”
His voice was so indignant that I would even think to ask if he planned on sharing, that I had to laugh. Mark had always been a robust eater. Yes, high school boys are notoriously hungry, especially if they’re jocks, which he was. With a spot on the school’s wrestling and track teams, he ate frequently, but he was picky about where he ate. Unlike other boys who could eat the same fast food every day, Mark’s palette always seemed to be a little more refined, as he opted for a higher level of restaurants.
I woke up with that conversation on my mind this morning, only to have my heart plummet when I realized it was Saturday, and there was no need for Mark and me to talk. Thus, I’m down in the kitchen, hoping maybe I can persuade my mother to do something together.
“Morning, baby,” she says in that hushed voice of hers. At times, I still get the feeling she tries not to speak too loudly out of the fear that my father will somehow pop up and remind her to lower her voice.
Seeing the coffee pot empty, I walk over and start to get the coffee ready for us. “I thought we could have coffee out on the back patio this morning and then take a walk around the neighborhood?” I suggest.
My mother peels her gaze away from staring out the window, and I cringe at the level of lost sadness I see in her eyes.
“A walk?”
Nodding, I move to the overhead cupboard, pulling down two coffee mugs and placing them onto the counter. “Yeah, I think it’ll be good for you to get out of the house for a little while. Oh, how about after our walk we get dressed and get our nails done? A spa day for us girls?”
My mother was always the one to keep up her appearance. She drilled into me, as a child, the importance of a woman looking her best at all times.
“How we look is our best feature, Jackie,” she would always say. “Your father never would’ve married me if I didn’t care about how I looked.”
As a young teen, I’d mentally shrug off her advice since, even then, I didn’t see what she and my father had as a prize or something I’d ever want. But I never argued with her.
“Don’t you have to go to work today?” she questions, seeming as confused as ever.
“It’s Saturday, Mama.” Reaching across the white tiles of the kitchen island, I take her hand in mine. “Mama, your hand is freezing.”
I shudder at the coldness of her hand before beginning to rub both of her hands in my own. “Coffee will warm you up.”
“Don’t worry about me,” she says, shrugging and shaking her head.
I drop her hands only to move back to the counter and fill our mugs with the coffee, sugar, and cream that she always uses. Feeling as if the roles have been reversed, I place my mother’s hands around the coffee mug and hold them up to her mouth. She’s reluctant at first but eventually takes a sip.
I don’t know why, but seeing her ingest a tiny bit of coffee fills me with some relief. My heart breaks for my mother. When I first moved back in, I hoped that this state she was in would get better over time. It’s only been a couple of months, but not much has changed. Whereas she was practically comatose immediately after my father’s funeral, she now will at least get out of bed and move to lay down in the living room or sit in the kitchen for hours on end, staring at nothing in particular.
Still, that’s not much of an improvement to speak of.
I stare at her from across the kitchen as I sip my coffee. I’d initially wanted to tell my mother all about my father’s betrayal, the way in which he manipulated his will to lea
ve her with nothing unless I obeyed his last wishes. However, staring at the woman in front of me, I know I can’t do that. Not yet, anyway. Maybe when she’s stronger.
“Mama, I think you need to see someone.” The words surprise me, but they come out forcefully and full of determination.
She wrinkles her eyebrows. “For my nails?”
Shaking my head, I say, “No, for … your grief. I’m concerned about you. Daddy has been gone for almost three months, and you can barely make it out of bed. It might be for the best if you talk to someone about it.”
She gives me a blank stare. For a long while, she doesn’t respond. Too long. She never reacts, actually, so I decide to drop it and choose another time when she’s open to the conversation.
“How about this instead … We’ll go for a walk and then come back, and I’ll order us some brunch for delivery. After we eat, I can do your nails. How’s that sound?”
She blinks. “Nails?” She holds out her hand in front of her. “You do them?”
I nod. “Yeah, I learned in college.” Sadness coils in my belly at how much of my life my mother missed. When I was sent away at sixteen, I rarely returned home. Partially because I didn’t want to and partly because my father forbade it. But I missed my mother. Even as I went on to complete my final two years of high school at an East Coast boarding school, I missed her. And when I moved in with my mother’s younger sister on the West Coast to attend college, I missed my mother. It was my aunt, Lynette, who taught me how to do my nails.
“Hey, Mama, how about we give Aunt Nettie a call today?” I ask, referring to my aunt by the unique nickname I’d given her when I first moved in.
“Lynette? She won’t want to hear from me.” My mother shakes her head. More sadness. She still thinks my aunt harbors a grudge against her. Little does she know, or maybe she doesn’t want to know that it’s my father my aunt couldn’t stand. He drove everyone close to my mother out of her life, even her own child.
A couple of hours later, my mother and I sit on the living room couch, our bellies filled with the omelets, bacon, Belgian waffle, and mimosas I’d ordered from a nearby restaurant. Well, my stomach is full. My mother had barely managed to eat half of her vegetarian omelet.
I dunk my mother’s feet into the warm water of the brown basin I filled.
“Is the water okay?” I ask, glancing up at her from my position on the cream carpet.
She nods, but her gaze is still miles away. I hope that getting her into some sort of self-care routine will bring back a semblance of the woman I once knew. For the first time, I’ve been seeing my mother with grey hairs showing and unkempt nails, wrinkled clothing. While, on the material level, those things don’t bother me, it’s the reality that I know my mother abhors moving about the world in this way. She’s just too caught up in grief to recognize it.
Grief over a man who doesn’t deserve it.
Switching my thoughts before I can become too embroiled in resentment at a dead man, I lift the pinkish-nude color I chose to do my mother’s nails in.
“It’s more of a spring than a late fall color, but I know nude pinks are your favorites,” I say as I shake the bottle of polish. “Maybe after Thanksgiving, we can do a Christmas red and green theme. We’ll have to go to a professional for that, though. I can’t do decorations and stuff. Aunt Nettie never got that far with me.”
“Thanksgiving? When is that?”
“The week after next, Mama. Remember? I told you. I think I’m going to put in an order for us at that organic food market that you like. They make an entire meal for you. It’s a little bit on the pricey side, but worth it.”
“Oh,” is all she says.
Lowering my gaze, I think about how, in the past, this woman would’ve never let catered food to be served at her holiday meals. She had to make everything from scratch. Just the way Henry aka ‘Hank’ Hinkerson liked it.
“Alright, let’s see how those—” A loud knocking at the door cuts me off.
My mother jumps, startled.
Turning to her, I ask, “Were you expecting someone?”
As I suspected, she shakes her head no.
“Just a minute,” I call from the living room, getting up and going to the window. Peering through the side curtain, I see a familiar dark grey SUV.
“The hell is he doing here?” I gripe, moving away from the window.
The knocking sounds again, only this time it’s louder. The only reason I opt to head to the front door is because of the frightened look in my mother’s eyes. Again, the reversal of roles becomes evident when she looks to me with a question in her gaze—as if I’m to tell her what’s happening and what’s going on. It reminds me of all those times as a child when I’d see my father get overly aggressive, either verbally or physically, and I’d look to my mother for reassurance.
When he left, she would tell me everything was okay, but I always spotted the look of fear in her eyes.
“I got it,” I say, not bothering to tell her who’s at the door. “You continue soaking your feet.”
I head down the entranceway and finally pull the door open to come face-to-face with my Uncle Will.
His smile is slow and almost devious.
“You’re home.” He steps fully inside, not bothering to wait for an invitation to do so probably because he’s aware that I wasn’t about to give one. “I thought perhaps you were out or something.”
Folding my arms across my chest, I glare at him. “Where would I be? It’s a Saturday. It’s not like I have work today.”
He takes a minute to look me over. “Just ensuring you’re not taking the weekend as an opportunity to reunite with old friends.”
An image of Mark comes to mind, and my stomach fills with heated anger. My instinct now, as it had been sixteen years ago, is to protect him. My father’s vengeance knows no bounds, and I won’t drag a man who’s been hurt enough into my family drama.
“What old friends? Any friends I had are either grown and moved away or have lives of their own. They probably wouldn’t even remember me,” I lie.
The truth is, I didn’t have very many friends in high school. I kept most people at arm's length because I didn’t want them to see what was happening at home. Only one person got closer than anyone else. And it cost him too much.
“Is Marietta here? I want to check in on my sister-in-law.”
I glare at his back as he proceeds down the hall, searching for my mother as if he owns this house. Closing the door, I follow behind him, feeling the need to protect my mother somehow. Not that I think he’d do anything physically to her, but she’s so fragile these days.
“Marietta, look at you,” he declares as we enter the living room. “Soaking your feet?”
“I’m giving her a pedicure,” I explain, rushing ahead of him to semi stand in between him and my mother.
Again, he glances over at me. “That’s good. Spending some quality time with your mother. I suspect she missed a lot of that when you were out being a wild child,” he accuses.
Staring him directly in the eye, I lift my chin in defiance, even though I don’t say anything. Growing up with the parents I did, I learned not to talk back, especially to a man, and simply obey. However, living with my aunt for a few years and then on my own as a professional woman, I’ve learned to speak up and become more of an advocate for myself.
Unfortunately, I can’t do it to my full capacity with my uncle yet. He still holds the cards in this game since my father turned them over to him. But, I silently glare at him in the eyes and, without words, show him that he doesn’t intimidate me, not the way my father did my mother.
“I’m sure you’ll enjoy that, Marietta. It’s been a while since you’ve had your nails done, it looks like. Glad to see Jackie’s taking care of you.”
“She is,” my mother says, giving me a genuine smile.
I give her one back.
“Well, Elaine wanted me to stop over and ask you ladies what your plans are for Thanks
giving this year?”
A lie.
My Aunt Elaine is just as much controlled by my uncle as my mother was by my father. Any visit he’s making is at his own desire.
“We have plans,” I insist, causing him to turn away from my mother to look at me.
“What would those be?”
I push out a breath, so badly wanting to tell him to mind his damn business and get out. “I’ll be cooking dinner here.”
Another lie, of course, but as I suspected, my mother doesn’t seem involved enough in the conversation to correct me.
“That sounds lovely, doesn’t it, Marietta?” He turns to my mother. “I know how hard you worked trying to get Jackie to learn how to cook when she was younger.”
“Jackie’s a good cook,” she says.
I wonder if she’s intentionally lying or going along with my lie.
“That’s a shame. Elaine, I suspect, was looking forward to having you both over for dinner.”
I nod and give him the most plastic smile ever. “Please, thank Aunt Elaine on both our behalves, but we’ll be here during the holiday. Watching the parade and maybe even a football game or two, right, Mama?”
She smiles and nods.
“See?”
His smile drops, and he stares at me. I steel myself against allowing him to see any type of dishonesty or deception in my gaze.
“Great then, maybe Christmas.”
“Maybe never,” I mumble.
He narrows his eyes on me. “What was that?”
“I said Mama’s water is getting cold. I need to get back to her pedicure.” I gesture to my mother, and he looks down.
She smiles at him, and an awkward silence overtakes the room. It’s evident he’s the uninvited guest to this spa day. Thankfully, he decides now is a good time for his exit.
Though I don’t want to, I walk him to the door, only to make sure I lock it behind him.
“Remember our deal, Jackie. You keep your Mama taken care of in more ways than just that little pedicure.”
A Holiday Temptation: A Holiday Novella Page 6
