About four years earlier—before her petition—she had stood in line to have him autograph his new book. Granted, he had signed over two hundred books that afternoon, but she had told him he had looked into her eyes, asked her name, and had not recognized her. She must be different, but, still, he couldn’t pinpoint anything.
Thomas placed Louisa back into her cradle and paused to watch. She smiled, stretched, and her hand closed on the ear of a stuffed rabbit. Her eyelids drifted closed, and she was asleep. She looks like her mother, he thought…lucky girl. He thought of Emma, and the smile faded from his face. He wasn’t ready to have fond memories of her yet. It was too soon.
He stared at his desk for a moment before a stack of students’ papers caught his eye, short stories from a creative writing class. He could use a distraction, so he snatched one from the pile and began to read. The central character was a young woman named Jenny. The name was spelled different, but the character had a mental illness and she was cheating on her husband. After the second page he shook his head and dropped the paper. Were the powers that be conspiring to make him keep thinking of Jennie?
As he reached for another story, Christa’s ringtone sounded and he jumped, grabbing his phone and taking the call before the noise awakened Louisa.
“Hi, Dad. What are you two doing?”
“Hey, Christa. Nothing much. Your sister is asleep and I’ve been working on next month’s seminar…You and Amy are both riding that weekend, right?”
“We are. I wish you could be there to watch.”
“I do too, but the seminar was scheduled months ago.”
“Next time?”
“Definitely.”
“How is Louisa?”
“Doing really well. Gaining weight. Growing taller…longer…whichever it is.”
They both laughed.
“I just realized that I’ve no one to keep her during the seminar. I suppose I’ll call the director and…”
“Why don’t you ask Jennie to watch her? She—”
“Why would I want to do that?” Thomas snapped.
Christa was quiet for a moment.
“It’s just a suggestion, Dad. You’ve no reason to be angry. Honestly…” Christa huffed out a breath. She was annoyed with him.
Thomas was about to speak, to explain that he was trying to put thoughts of Jennie out of his mind, but Christa kept talking.
“She doesn’t live too far from Atlanta and she has never seen Louisa, and—”
“And we can keep it that way.” Thomas had risen from his chair and was pacing across the room. He struggled to keep his voice down. “You know I don’t want her to be around you. I certainly don’t want her with your baby sister.”
“Come on, Dad, or I might have to start quoting Shakespeare about ‘dothing’ and protesting.”
“’Dothing’ isn’t a word, Christa.”
“Uh, yeah, I know that, Dad. I also know that you and Jennie had problems, but they were years ago. Jennie is different now. You’ve seen her. You know she has changed.”
When Thomas didn’t respond, Christa continued.
“Besides, it’ll just be for a few hours. If she stays at the school, you or Alexis can check on her during breaks…You might discover that she’s a nice person now.” Christa chuckled. “Or you could ask Ms. Cross to keep Louisa for the weekend.”
“Cecelia Cross?” Thomas rolled his eyes.
“I know she’d be more than willing to help out.”
“You’re not playing fair. There are other people…”
“Come on, Dad…” Christa coaxed. “What are you afraid of?”
Thomas sighed. The universe most definitely was conspiring against him in the Jennie department. “I’ll think about it.”
“About Ms. Cross or Jennie?” Thomas made a hissing sound and Christa laughed. “I’m only trying to help.”
Thomas laughed too. “I know, sweetie. I said I’ll think about it.”
When Christa rang off, Thomas walked to the window and stared down into the garden. Ignoring the temperature, flowers were beginning to appear, and the rose bush Emma had transplanted from her house when they had married had its first flush of deep yellow blossoms.
He should not be having to make decisions like this. It wasn’t fair. But then, he supposed, life wasn’t fair sometimes, was it?
He glanced at Louisa. He would have dismissed Christa’s suggestion without a second thought if the same idea had not occurred to him less than an hour earlier, out of the blue as they say. Not to mention the fact that, for whatever reason, thoughts of Jennie kept arising.
They also say everything happens for a reason…
And Christa was right. Jennie had certainly changed. She was quieter than he remembered. She owned a home and she taught school—he would have had difficulty imagining the girl he had married doing either of those. She had stood up to her father, something she would never have done when she was younger.
That’s not fair, he thought. She had not always done what her father had wanted, but, except for going off to college, most of her defiance had taken place out of his sight, and it generally involved a boy, whether it was cuddling behind the stands at the high school football stadium while her father watched the game, or the marathon game of strip poker in which they both had joined while on a camping trip during their sophomore year in college, the trip itself something that would have set her father on a rampage if had had known of it.
Most of her father’s rules had also involved boys. Boys, lying, and stealing.
Jennie had never fooled around, lied, or stolen, at least not until the end of their marriage, when she certainly had lied to him, had cheated on him, and had stolen his heart, only to break it in two.
He rolled his eyes. “A bit overdramatic,” he mumbled.
Thomas shook his head. He should have known Jennie was sick, should have forced her to get help when her behavior changed so radically. If he had it to do all over again…
He heard Louisa stir, and he saw she had turned over, still grasping the rabbit.
Thomas settled into his chair and leaned back.
Emma had liked Jennie. Alexis, Christa, and Amy liked her too. Tasha was another story, but maybe he should try to get to know her again.
He flipped through the contact list on his phone. Suddenly, his head snapped up.
If she would sit with Louisa, he’d have to take her to dinner…to thank her. It would be the polite, respectful thing to do. His stomach churned.
He couldn’t even imagine going on a date, not now just three months after Emma had passed away, not ever again, really. The thought of getting to know someone new…it was all too much.
But Jennie wasn’t someone new, not exactly, and it wouldn’t be a date, would it? No, just a way of saying thank you.
He started to tap her number to make the call, but he hesitated.
He needed to think about this.
She probably wouldn’t be interested anyway…
Thomas Calls
It was cold in Whitesburg, too, and Jennie sat close to the hearth, reading Thomas’s most recent book, published just a month earlier. Alexis had sent her an advance copy, but she had just started reading this morning. She sipped hot chocolate from the mug on the table beside her chair and noted she was already midway through the story. She resumed reading, her finger barely pausing as she swiped it across the e-reader to go from page to page.
“Not now,” she exclaimed as the telephone rang, breaking her concentration. “Voice mail, here it comes,” she mumbled, but she glanced at the screen before rejecting the call and found Thomas’s name displayed. She answered it instead.
“Thomas?”
“Jennie, how are you?”
“I’m fine, Thomas. How about you? How is Louisa?”
His tone changed, and she could almost hear him smiling. “Louisa is wonderful. You should see her, Jennie, she’s the most beautiful baby, she smiles all of the time, seems to be happy…”
>
He talked on, and Jennie smiled too. She had forgotten how he had fallen in love with Alexis and Christa on the days they were born. He had bonded with them immediately, while, as she recalled, it had taken her some time.
“I’m rambling, aren’t I? I’m sorry, I don’t seem to be able to help it when I’m asked about her. Hold on.”
Jennie heard his voice, but could not make out the word.
“Louisa was crying a little, but it must have been a dream. She’s asleep now. Her fist is clenching the ear of the bunny you sent her. It’s her favorite.”
“I’m glad she likes it.”
“Have you seen the girls lately?”
That was a really strange question. He hadn’t called her in years, and Jennie knew the girls told him when they visited. She wondered what was going on, but answered him anyway.
“Not in a couple of months,” she said. “Alexis, Christa, and Amy spent a weekend with me. Everyone’s schedule has been too convoluted to get together since them. I talk to them almost every week. They seem to be doing well.”
“They do,” Thomas agreed. “Is it cold in Whitesburg? I have a fire burning this afternoon. Ridiculous weather for April.”
“You sound like me. I’m huddling by the fire too. I’m enjoying your new book. In fact, I almost sent your call to voice mail so I wouldn’t have to stop reading.”
“I’m glad you’re enjoying it. I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”
Jennie laughed. “No problem. The story was getting so intense that I really needed a break.”
Thomas did not respond for a moment and Jennie felt he was grasping for something to say. He reminded her of the teenaged boys who used to call, asking for a date, unsure if she would go out with them.
She thought of Tim Johnson, a guy she had dated for a while in high school, until her father had chased him away like he did every boy she ever dated except for Thomas. He had been unable to frighten Thomas.
She would have thought the same about Tim at one time. Students at their school had stood in awe of him. His grades had ranged from A-minus to A, he had played on the football team, and the girls had agreed he was knockout gorgeous. Jennie had never known him to be at a loss for something to say…except the first time he had called her to ask for a date.
After beating about the bush for over twenty minutes, he had stammered, his voice rising an octave and then dropping to a whisper, and he had asked her to go to a movie with him.
Now Thomas seemed to be acting the same way Tim had that day. Was Thomas going to ask her out? Surely that wasn’t it. She sipped her chocolate and stared at the wall while she listened.
“The girls will be home at Easter. Five of them, counting Louisa,” he continued. “I feel like Tevya in Fiddler on the Roof.”
Jennie chuckled.
“I never dreamed I’d have that many children. We had planned just the two, hadn’t we?”
“I’m not sure we ever really discussed it.”
There was a long pause, and it made Jennie start to feel uncomfortable too, so she broke the silence. “I’d better let you go, Thomas. You must be busy and I have this really good book to finish…”
“One more thing, Jennie, before you go, the reason I called…”
He is asking me out. Jennie’s mouth dropped open, and she held her breath.
“The reason I called is that next month, on May fifteenth, it’s a Saturday, I’m teaching a seminar at Emory. Well, Alexis and Tasha are helping me and Christa and Amy have a competition, and I was wondering, Jennie…I was wondering if, well, if you could take care of Louisa that day.”
She heard the same note of hope in his voice she remembered in Tim’s, but Thomas was not asking for a date, not exactly. She’d thought he wanted her to disappear, but he wanted to see her…even if only so she could help him with his daughter. Look after his baby…that thought brought a whole new set of butterflies racing through her insides.
“Ah…all day, Thomas?”
“She still sleeps most of the time. I mean, you’d have to feed her, change a couple of diapers. I’d bring everything she would need—food, clothes, stroller. You could go shopping, eat lunch, pretty much anything you might want to do. I’ll be finished about four o’clock, and, uh…I thought we might have dinner before you left for home.”
That part did sound an awful lot like a date…
Jennie closed her eyes. One part of her was shouting for joy. Another was applying brakes hard enough to stop a locomotive.
“I…I’m not sure, Thomas. I mean, I’d love to see Louisa. I’d love to see you, to help you I mean, but a baby? All day?”
Neither one spoke for a moment, until Thomas cleared his throat.
“It’s…it’s okay, Jennie. Don’t worry about it.”
Jennie could hear disappointment in his voice and she felt like crying for him. She started to interrupt, to agree to help him, but he kept talking.
“It was just an idea, probably a bad one.” He was speaking rapidly, seeming eager to finish the call. “We’ll find a couple of students to sit with her.” He sighed. “You’re right, though, I do need to go. It was nice to talk with you. Bye.”
Jennie heard nothing more, and she looked at the phone as the words Call Ended popped onto her screen. She stared at it for several moments, warring with herself over what it all meant.
“He ignores me for four years, and then…this. It’s insulting. He’s in a bind and he needs my help. He doesn’t want to pay a sitter.”
Thomas can afford to pay a sitter. You know that. He wants you to take care of his daughter. He wants to take you out to dinner.
“How can he call me a tramp, an alcoholic, and all of the other vile things he said about me in court and then want to be friends?”
He didn’t say anything that wasn’t true, and he was fighting for his children.
“He doesn’t want to be friends. I’ll be merely a convenience.”
After teaching all day, convenience would be a burger, HBO, and a sleeping baby. Dinner with a former wife? Not convenient at all.
“A dinner will be a date. I don’t want to date Thomas.”
Liar.
Jennie glanced at herself in a nearby mirror and repeated the word out loud. “Liar,” she said, then dropped her head into her hands, practically growling at herself for all the foolish thoughts she was having. The competing voices were too much.
She left her e-reader on the floor, forgotten, and walked to the bay window overlooking her garden. Although it was cold, it was April, and the roses were in full bloom, their first flush of the year. One large shrub, her favorite, was covered with brilliant orange-red blooms at the ends of the long, straight canes. She had planted it because an identical bush had grown beside the steps leading up to the garage apartment in which she, Thomas, and the girls had lived in Atlanta.
She recalled scraping her hand across one of the canes as she had rushed past on the morning she left. Her thumb had hurt when she gripped her steering wheel, and when she had glanced at her hand, she’d found a thorn embedded in her skin, a thin red line scratched across her palm.
She turned away. Thomas had sounded so hopeful, as if he had felt certain she would agree to his request. His disappointment was just as plain, magnified, perhaps, by the contrast. While some guys seemed to enjoy the punishment of repeated rejections, she knew Thomas was not one of them. He would never call again. She likely would never see him again either—at a graduation, perhaps—since Emma had been the one to issue the invitations to visit.
She walked idly though the house, thinking. Finally, she refilled her mug, settled back into her chair near the fire, and called Alexis.
“How’s the weather in Atlanta?” she asked as Alexis picked up.
“Same as where you are. Cold, with a capital C. I have nothing to wear, Jennie. I sent most of my winter clothes home. I almost froze when I went jogging this morning.”
“You went out?”
“I did. Big mistake.
I had to jump into a hot shower when I reached home. Anyway, I’ll be inside for the rest of the day writing—a paper for history and a short story for creative writing.”
“That should keep you entertained.”
“One way to put it…What are you up to?”
“Sitting by the fire, drinking hot chocolate, reading your dad’s book. You know, it’s really good.” Jennie glanced down, searching for the e-reader.
“That sounds so good. I wish I had a fire. Robbie and I could cuddle up in front of it…”
“I thought your goal was to get your homework done.”
Alexis laughed. “Research, Jennie. My story is a love story. I’ll be writing a love—a romantic—scene. I may need inspiration…I’m glad you like Dad’s book.”
Jennie took a deep breath.
“Speaking of your father, he called me a few minutes ago.”
“Really?”
“Yes. It was a strange call, Alexis.”
“In what way?”
“He told me about the seminar he has next month…”
“Right, Tasha and I are helping him. We’re going to have so much fun. The class will break into small groups several times during the day, and we’ll be leading two of those groups. We get to hear Dad’s lectures, and we get paid too.”
“Sounds like a good deal. Here’s what is strange. He asked me to take care of Louisa during the seminar and…”
“Awesome,” Alexis exclaimed. “You haven’t met Louisa yet, have you? She’s beautiful, Jennie. And sweet and good-tempered and she smiles all of the time, and she has a funny little laugh. I can’t wait for you to see her. I’m trying to convince Dad to let her spend the night at my place.”
“He wants me to go to dinner with him…”
“Of course he does. He wouldn’t expect you to sit all day and then just hit the road. Besides, he’ll want to see you.”
“Alexis, I’m not sure what to do. I told him I couldn’t help him, but…” She thought her phone had dropped the call, Alexis was so quiet. “Alexis, are you there?”
“I’m here. You have another commitment?”
“No, but…”
“Then why would you say no?”
Once and Future Wife Page 6
