Chesapeake Tide

by Jeanette Baker

  She looked around the room, making eye contact with nearly everyone there. “I don’t know of any other way to fix this,” she said softly. “I guess you could try to get other jobs and hope that I’ll come across the problem on my own. Or you could take your boats farther and farther out into the bay. But there’s a risk. I’m sure you’ve already figured it out. Marshyhope Creek is too small to have such high incidences of leukemia. People are being affected. We could wait for a task force to declare this an environmental hazard area. But no one likes to do that. It destroys tourism and real estate values and it could take years to recover. If anyone has a better idea, I’d like to hear it. It doesn’t need to be tonight, but please come forward soon. I’m open to anything.” She was silent for a long moment and then she smiled.

  “Think about it,” she said. “If you have no more questions, I’ll say thanks for coming out tonight and please help yourself to coffee and a piece of cake.”

  They came up courteously, one by one, to shake her hand and tell her it was good to see her home again. She knew no one would offer an opinion. It was too soon and these were men slow to reach a decision. They would think and talk and think again, and not until the entire issue had been debated a thousand times would they take a side. She only hoped it wouldn’t take too long.

  Russ waited until they were alone. “You look worn out,” he said. “How about coming home with me for a swig of Jack Daniel’s and a view that’ll make your heart drop?”

  “I’ll pass on the Jack Daniel’s, but a glass of wine and the view would be nice.”

  “I’ve got that, too.”

  “You’re on. I’ll meet you there.”

  Libby walked up the steps of Hennessey House and went through the screen door just as she had a thousand times before. Russ was true to his word. A glass of clear, sparkling wine and a plate of crackers and cheese sat beside his Jack Daniel’s on the back porch table. She picked up her wineglass and sank, gratefully, into a chair. “I’m glad that’s over,” she said.

  He leaned against the railing, hands in his pockets, and looked at her thoughtfully. “You were great,” he said, “a real natural in front of people. I’d forgotten that about you.”

  She shrugged. “So did I.”

  “I never really gave you credit for wanting the acting thing so badly. I thought it was a phase that would pass. I thought you’d marry me, we’d settle here and raise a houseful of kids.”

  “You mean like, every pretty girl wants to be an actress?”

  He winced. “Something like that.”

  “You were right. It was a phase, a very short one.”

  “That’s the reason you left, isn’t it?”

  She looked out across the dark water. “Partly.”

  “Why did you stay in L.A. all those years, after it was over?”

  Libby wondered the very same thing. She sipped her wine and tried to explain. “I’m not sure I realized the dream was truly over for a long time. When I did, there was Chloe and I was in school. I had too much pride and didn’t want to give my parents the satisfaction of knowing they were right. I’m not sure I wouldn’t do it all over again.”

  He separated himself from the railing and walked toward her. “You broke my heart. Do you know that?”

  “You’re not entirely blameless.”

  He stopped, surprised, pulled out another chair and sat down facing her. “You’ve alluded to that before and I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  She drew a deep breath. She’d known this moment was coming. She’d rehearsed it for years, choreographing every expression, editing the words. It was time for opening night.

  “I found out about you and Shelby.”

  Russ could feel the blood in his cheeks. “Excuse me?” “

  Shelby can be very distracting.”

  “If you’re referring to that scene at the club, you’re making more of it than it was.”

  “You don’t have to defend yourself, Russ,” Libby said softly. “Shelby’s very persuasive. You’re not the first man she’s gone after with a vengeance. It’s like a game with her. The harder you resist, the greater the challenge.” She twisted a strand of hair around her finger. “I don’t think you were much of a challenge, though, were you, in the beginning?”

  Russ froze, his glass suspended in midair, and wondered if he was going insane. “What’s your game, Libba Jane?”

  Libby swallowed, promising herself that this time she would shelve her temper. She began calmly enough. “For all her faults, Shelby was my dearest friend and you were my boyfriend. Those relationships are sacrosanct. I had to choose, Russ, and I chose friendship.”

  He was beginning to get angry. “You’re way off base. I’ve never been interested in Shelby.”

  “Really? What about when we were kids? Was I the first girl you ever slept with?”

  “Why bring that up now?” he asked warily.

  She kept her eyes on his face, forcing him to look at her. “You knew exactly what to do. There was no awkwardness, no fumbling, and you lasted a long time.”

  “Since when are you the expert on seventeen-year-old virgins?”

  “Eric wasn’t much older when I married him.”

  He whitened, surprised at the sudden twisting of his stomach. Libba had never directly alluded to the intimate aspects of her marriage. If he pretended hard enough, he could almost believe it never existed.

  She didn’t give him a chance to regroup. “It was Shelby, wasn’t it?”

  Russ twisted his glass in his hands. “Whatever I had with Shelby happened a long time ago, Libba, long before there was anything between you and me. Let it rest.”

  Her voice cracked with emotion. “There was never a time before you and me. I’ve known you since I was eight years old.”

  “It wasn’t the same,” he insisted. “I didn’t think of you that way.”

  She was bitterly, blazingly angry, but only her eyes gave her away, her eyes and the words, clear and slow, that formed on her lips. “You’re a liar, Russ Hennessey. You were sticking your tongue down my throat since I was fourteen years old. You would’ve done more too if I’d let you. Don’t tell me your affair with Shelby was anything but complete and total betrayal. You cheated on me.”

  “Did she tell you that?”

  “No. Mitch told me, the summer I met Eric Richards, the summer I broke your heart.”

  It was true, all of it, and he was guilty, although he never expected his own brother to betray him. Why no longer mattered. Mitch was gone and whatever motivation he had in those long-ago days when they were kids was gone with him.

  There was no good rationalization for his lapse with Shelby twenty years ago in the peanut fields, except that he’d been sixteen years old with raging hormones and the girl he preferred wouldn’t let him do more than run his hands up and down the front of her sweater. Not that he would have done anything more. There were two kinds of girls in Marshyhope Creek, those who put out and those you brought home to Sunday dinner. Shelby was the first kind and Libba, the second. He would no more have expected Cole Delacourte’s daughter to drop her panties than he would have expected Shelby to wear any.

  In the end, it hadn’t mattered. He and Libba had fallen in love, the serious, forever, one-man-one-woman kind of love, and because Libba never did anything halfway, the panties and everything else had come off after all. None of which explained why she was madder about events that occurred in the distant past than she was about anything he’d done since.

  He spoke quietly with no hope of immunity. “Like I said, it was a long time ago. People make mistakes. I made mistakes. We were kids. There was never anyone after you. What’s the point of all this now?”

  “I wanted you to know why I left and why I’ll leave again if I have to and why I don’t want to hear about your broken heart. You have no idea what you did to mine when I found out about you and my best friend.”

  “All right, Libba. I apologize. I’ll do whatever you wan
t.”

  Libby’s eyes widened. She hadn’t expected instant capitulation, not from Russ.

  “There is one condition, though.”

  Of course. She should have known. Here it was, right from the horse’s mouth. “What is it?”

  “We play it out in the open, so that everyone knows about us, your daughter, mine, your parents, my ex-wife.”

  Color flooded her cheeks and chest. She’d grown up in a household where protocol was a way of life as natural as bees on honeysuckle and confession on Saturday. In her world, more specifically in Nola Ruth’s world, there was no room for bypassing formalities.

  She wet her lips. “How am I supposed to explain to my daughter and my parents that I’m sleeping with my old boyfriend?”

  His expression was unreadable. He dumped the bourbon out over the railing, opened the cooler on the porch and pulled out a beer. Popping the lid, he threw the flap across the deck and into a trash can. “You’ll think of something,” he said. “You always were good with words.”

  The night was warm and the alcohol made it warmer. Libby poured herself another glass of wine. “I have a condition, too.”

  “What is it?”

  “Shelby’s on the prowl again. I don’t want you encouraging her.”

  “The thought hadn’t occurred to me.”

  “Like I said, she can be persuasive.”

  He lifted her chin. “Is that why you’re mad at her, because you think there’s something between us?”

  When she didn’t answer he laughed. “You’re a fool, Libba Jane. The only times I’ve ever looked at anyone else is when you wouldn’t have me.” His voice lowered. “Stay with me tonight.”

  She shook her head. “I’ll sleep with you, but waking up beside you is something different.”

  He frowned. “Explain that.”

  She held his gaze, her eyes shadowed and colorless in the moonlight. “This is about sex. I’m not interested in a relationship.”

  He looked incredulous. “You’re kidding.”

  “No.”

  He moved close to her, his eyes narrow and serious. “Tell me why you’re here if you don’t want anything real.”

  “Lust,” she said bluntly. “You’re sexy and attractive and it’s been a while.”

  A slow, amused smile crossed his face. “Shame on you, Libba Jane. You’ve changed. What would your mama say?”

  “More than likely my mouth would be around a bar of soap.”

  He set the beer down on the deck and reached for her hands. “I don’t believe you,” he said softly, “and I can think of better uses for your mouth.” Circling her palm with his thumb, he lifted her other hand and pressed his lips against the skin inside.

  She couldn’t seem to breathe properly. His mouth moved from her palm to the inside of her wrist, to the tip of her elbow. She leaned back and closed her eyes, content to wait for whatever came next.

  Russ took his time, his lips moving from her shoulder to her collarbone, settling for a time on the pulse in her throat. Finally; when she was all boneless heat, he found her mouth, holding her still while his tongue plundered and swept and teased until her arms wound around his neck and she pressed against him, urging his hands into places familiar and new.

  One at a time he eased the buttons from their holes, pushing aside the white linen, exposing the lacy scrap that barely concealed her breasts. She was fuller than he remembered, with mature breasts and long, silky legs. He wanted to see her, all of her. He lifted his head. “Let’s go upstairs.”

  She nodded. Leaving her blouse in the chair, she gave him her hand and followed him up the stairs and into the large front bedroom that had once been Beau and Cora Hennessey’s.

  The bed was high. He pulled her after him, and there, in a tangle of sheets, he played her, caressing and kissing and probing until she wound her legs around his thighs, cupped his cheeks and pulled him into her. She felt his body go rigid and tight, and for a long, timeless moment he didn’t move. Burying her face in his neck, she tasted salt, smelled his scent, heard his harsh, shallow breathing. Finally, it began, the rhythmic moving, slow at first and then faster and still faster until, caught up in a swirl of desire and motion, she lost track of time and direction and space and gave herself up to the moment, to warm arms and hair-roughened legs and the warm, wet heat exploding inside of her.

  Libba lay on the bed, her head pillowed on Russ’s shoulder, marveling at the wasted years of her marriage, wondering why she’d waited so long to satisfy such a basic primal need. Russ slept beside her. She didn’t want to analyze her feelings for Russ Hennessey. It was too early for that, and sex, she knew, tainted the truth, wrapped it in a rosy haze that faded all too quickly, like a room in the harsh light of early morning after a party.

  She’d thought of Russ over the years and imagined him married to someone else, someone after Tracy, an outsider, a stranger, a woman from somewhere other than Marshyhope Creek. It could still happen and if it did, she would be prepared. She closed her eyes and imagined what the future Mrs. Russell Hennessey would look like. Red hair... no, that was too close to home. Blond would be better. Libby’s mind wandered. A tall, athletic blonde with strong features and straight, even teeth. Russ noticed teeth. It was odd, really, his fetish for a woman’s mouth. Most men noticed breasts, legs or hips. With Russ, it was teeth. It was one of the first things he’d noticed about her, way back in the third grade, the way her teeth, baking-soda white and much too large for her mouth, clung to her bottom lip when she laughed. For years after, he had remarked on her childish overbite and how she’d finally grown into her smile. Whoever Russ’s future wife was, the woman would definitely need good teeth.

  Libby was prepared to accept a stranger, a woman who even now walked and slept and ate and talked, a woman whose life existed somewhere else on the planet. What she couldn’t accept was someone who’d shared the same childhood, recalled the same memories, a woman who’d known Russ when he was a boy as Libby had known him. Those years were hers alone, the free, joy-filled, gilt-touched hours of a magical childhood. They were all she had of unfettered happiness and she wouldn’t share them.

  Carefully, she extricated herself from Russ’s arms, pulled the covers over him and gathered her clothes. Downstairs she found her blouse, her purse and keys and quietly let herself out of the house. It was after midnight. The roads were dark and empty. Hopefully everyone would be asleep at home and she wouldn’t be required to come up with an explanation, an absurdity for a thirty-seven-year-old woman, but still necessary.

  The last thing she expected was her family home ablaze with lights and two police cars, red lights blinking, in the driveway.

  Twenty-Five

  Her first thought was for her mother. Libby raced up the front steps and through the long entry. She stopped abruptly at the living room. Two police officers stood talking with her father. Bailey Jones sat on the couch, his face pale as bleached bone, his eyes lifeless. Chloe was curled up with Nola Ruth in her wheelchair, her slight body tucked in beside her grandmother’s.

  “Libba Jane,” her mother said, “thank God you’re home.”

  Chloe separated herself from her grandmother and ran across the room into Libby’s arms.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “Bailey’s mother died,” sobbed Chloe.

  That explained Bailey, but not the police and not Chloe. Bewildered, Libby looked at her mother.

  “Chloe went to see Bailey on her bike,” her mother said, her words startlingly clear. “Lizzie died inside that trailer. Bailey was with her when it happened. Together Chloe and the boy brought her body here in Bailey’s truck. Chloe drove.”

  “Dear God,” Libby gasped. She clutched Chloe fiercely. “How did you manage such a thing? Why didn’t you call?”

  “There’s no phone.”

  Libby spoke to the boy on the couch. “Bailey, I’m so sorry.”

  He didn’t answer.

  Cole spoke to his daughter. “Tell Serena t
o make up a room for Bailey. He’ll stay with us until other arrangements are made.”

  Libby nodded. Keeping Chloe with her, she climbed the stairs to the third floor and knocked on Serena’s bedroom door.

  The woman answered immediately, clucking with sympathy when Libby explained. “I knew something was wrong when those red lights kept flashing outside my window. That poor boy.” She took Chloe into her arms. “There, there, sweetheart. You’re a brave thing. You did exactly right. I don’t know anyone else who would have been brave enough or smart enough to do such a thing.”

  Chloe managed a watery smile.

  “I’ll make up that room right away, Miss Libba. That boy could use a good dose of Verna Lee’s valerian root. I’ll see if Mr. Cole has any.”

  “If not, chamomile tea might be a good idea,” suggested Libby. “Chloe might like some, too, if you can get either of them to swallow anything.”

  “I’ll see to it. Just give me a minute to dress.”

  Libby walked Chloe into the bathroom, settled her on the edge of the tub and gently sponged her face and hands with a hot washcloth. She spoke gently, soothingly, until the child’s trembling eased and then stopped altogether. Chloe yawned. “I’m tired,” she said.

  “I imagine so,” replied her mother. She led Chloe to her room and pulled down the bedcovers.

  “I’m not sure about school tomorrow, Mom.”

  “We’ll worry about that in the morning.”

  “What about Bailey?”

  “Serena will take care of him.” Libby hesitated. “There isn’t much we can do for Bailey right now,” she said gently. “He’s hurting and he’ll have to work his way through the pain himself. The best thing you can do is give him space. Don’t push, Chloe. It never works.”