by Jessica Kate
Natalie gaped. That was the last thing she’d expected Jem to say. Berate his father for dishonesty? Sure. Demand answers? A given. But forgiveness? It wasn’t a move in their family’s playbook.
Jem moved toward the door. Natalie moved to follow him.
“She found it hard to cope.” John’s voice cracked on the last word.
They both paused.
“There was a bad patch after Mike was born, then again after you. Except it was worse the second time.”
Jem swiveled. “What really happened?”
The question was quiet, nonjudgmental.
“She started drinking. Too much.” He cleared his throat. “But she covered it well. I didn’t realize the extent until . . . Well, I was meant to be home that evening but got held up at the station. She needed groceries, and she decided to leave you with Mike for an hour and drive herself to get them.” He shrugged. “They didn’t know exactly how it happened. But she hit a tree.”
Motion caught Natalie’s eye.
Trembling. His hands were trembling. “Today would’ve been our fortieth anniversary.”
That explained the photos. Natalie bent and gathered the nearest ones, tapping them into neat piles and placing them inside the patterned box she found upturned behind the couch.
Jem remained where he was. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
A photo slipped from John’s fingers, bounced on the carpet. “You were just like her. Even down to your blasted freckles. She was so carefree, always the life of the party. If I’d kept her more grounded, not encouraged her antics, maybe she wouldn’t have . . . Maybe things would have been different.” He shrugged. “So I tried to, with you.”
Natalie set the box of restacked photos on the couch.
Jem walked out of the room.
She picked up her shoes. Was he leaving? Should she follow?
“Don’t forget to lock the door!” Dad called the words out after him.
Jem banged around the kitchen and returned with a garbage bag. He scooped up three Big Mac boxes. “I’m not leaving, Dad. I’m cleaning this place up. How long has it been since you were at work?”
“I took a couple days off.”
Natalie looked around the room with fresh eyes. John never took vacations. This wasn’t just a bad night. What did you do when the most capable person in the world had a breakdown?
Jem nudged her. “I’m sorry. I don’t think I should leave him like this.”
She just smiled. It was okay. Tonight’s plans had changed.
* * *
Natalie drew a pattern in John’s living room carpet with her bare toe. Dimmed light bathed the room as Michael Bublé crooned on the stereo. Were it not for the sixtysomething police captain snoring upstairs, the place would be downright romantic.
Jem, tie long gone and shirtsleeves rolled up, tossed the last candy wrapper into the trash. He glanced at Natalie. “Sorry tonight didn’t go as planned.”
“Award ceremonies are boring anyway.” She tried for a light tone.
“Yeah, I’d much rather scrub floors.” Jem looked at his wet socked feet with disgust.
Natalie rolled her eyes. “It would’ve been easier if you knew how to mop properly.” He’d sloshed way too much water out of the bucket, and it still lay in pools on the tiled floor. Amateur.
But it’d been a good strategy for helping his father. She’d agreed that leaving John alone in this state wasn’t a great idea, and neither was staying in that living room where John remained alternately silent and belligerent. So Jem had stayed quiet and gotten to work.
Together they’d cleaned up the trash, mopped the floors, put in a load of wash, and fitted fresh sheets onto John’s mattress. Jem had finally talked his father into going to bed and getting some real rest. It looked as though he’d been sleeping in that recliner the past couple of days.
And all the time, the thought that had taken root in Natalie’s brain when Jem said “I forgive you” had blossomed into a full-blown notion.
Jem had changed.
Her fiancé all those years ago would never have said those words to John. Much less meant them. But everything Jem had done tonight indicated his determination to build a bridge between himself and the prickly lump of stubbornness he called a father.
If Jem could change toward his father, was there a chance that their relationship would be different this time too?
One thought nagged at her. What had sparked this change? What had even brought Jem back to his faith? He spoke so little of his metamorphosis in Chicago. She needed to fill in some puzzle pieces.
So, as she followed Jem down the basement stairs to fetch the finished load of laundry, she voiced the question.
“Fill in some pieces?” He echoed her words as he crossed to the washer. “You want to talk about what we both did in the last seven years?”
“We know what I did,” she answered quickly. No need to delve into her string of meaningless jobs and mind-numbing years.
A mistake she wasn’t going to repeat.
“You mean you want to go over why I left?”
She paused. She’d avoided this conversation since Jem’s return. Why would she want to hear a list of reasons explaining why he’d stopped loving her?
But maybe this needed to happen. She braced herself. “Okay.”
32
Jem was silent for so long as he hauled the clothes out of the washer and carried them upstairs, Natalie wasn’t sure if he was going to tell her at all.
Back at ground level, he fetched a drying rack and positioned it by the north windows where they’d catch the morning light. He had the third sock hung on the rack before he spoke. “The Miss America pageant.”
“Excuse me?”
“That’s what Dad and I were fighting about that tipped me over the edge. He was into me over why I hadn’t been to church that Sunday.” The corner of his mouth tipped up. “I was doing college assignments, but just to see his eyes pop, I told him it was because I wanted to watch the Miss America pageant.”
Natalie gave a low whistle. She could well imagine the reaction that’d get.
Jem shrugged. “It was the latest in a series of fights. We’d been building to it for a while. I know we were trying to save for the—well, to save money—but staying with him instead of moving out was pretty much a terrible idea.”
She remembered. Money or not, she’d warned Jem of that at the time.
“I think Dad suspected what I was hiding: there was not one single part of me that wanted anything to do with God. I had twenty years of resentment toward Dad for always bossing me around and never giving me the benefit of the doubt. I thought God was the same.” He finally met her eyes. “And I knew your greatest dream was to build on your father’s legacy with his ministry.”
Natalie swallowed. He’d expressed parts of this—in far less coherent fashion—standing on Mom and Dad’s back porch on that terrible Thursday night when he told her he was leaving for Chicago. She could still smell the scent of burned vegetables that’d emanated from the house. She’d found out later Mom was too busy eavesdropping to remember she had dinner on the stove.
Jem touched her hand, fingertips barely grazing her skin. “It wasn’t your fault. At all.”
Natalie managed the barest of smiles. “Obviously. Keep going.”
He pulled a pair of John’s pants from the hamper. “I agonized over it, but I couldn’t escape it. Our lives were headed two totally different directions. You wanted to spend your life working for God. And I wanted to spend mine running away from Him.” He shrugged, eyes on the wet clothes. “It’s no excuse. But at the time, I didn’t think it was a choice. I couldn’t imagine spending my life serving—or pretending to serve—a God just like my father. And I couldn’t marry you, knowing that. So I left.” He shook his head. “It sounds even worse when I say it out loud.”
Natalie cleared her throat. All this time, and she’d thought he’d been disappointed in her. That somehow she hadn’t measured
up. The thought was so hard to dislodge, she had trouble fully believing his explanation. “And then?”
“Fast-forward five years, and the life that I thought would make me happy just wasn’t working out. I had my degree, my job, a girlfriend. No dad or God to make me feel guilty. And I was miserable. Then one day I got a postcard from Charlottesville. I thought it was from you.”
She snapped her gaze up. “I didn’t—”
“It was my cousin. She puts the tails on her f’s like you do.” He hung the last shirt, placed the hamper on the kitchen counter, and pointed to the door. “Want to finish this conversation on the porch?”
She shook her head. “Finish the story.”
He leaned back against the counter, hands in his pockets. “I was ready to drive back here overnight. It was a wake-up call. I was miserable. I’d thought giving God control would ruin my life, but I’d ruined it just fine on my own. So I broke up with Chloe and went back to church. Then Chloe came back a few weeks later with her news.” He offered half a smile. “At first I thought God was punishing me. I stopped church again for a while. But the pastor reached out, and we talked about it. He helped me realize that me projecting Dad onto God was totally wrong. The road back started for real from there.”
Natalie gripped the back of a dining room chair. It was true. She’d ignored the signs when they were younger, but the distance between Jem and God had been real. Things were different now, she could tell. But still . . . “What changed now? You and your dad have fought the entire time since you got back. Something’s different.”
He smiled. “You.”
“Me?”
“You forgave me. Every day, each time you got mad again. I want Olly to have a grandfather. And if you can forgive me, maybe I can forgive him.” He picked up his keys. “Come on. I’ll take you home.”
She followed him out the door, and they drove back to her apartment in silence. Natalie pulled the bobby pins loose from her hair and rested her head against the seat, processing the conversation they’d just had.
She’d asked God for an indication about whether Jem had changed.
She’d gotten it.
He walked her to the door and waited as she fished out her keys. “Did I tell you that you look amazing tonight?”
Sweat dampened her dress, her hair was an unruly tangle, and her shoes were . . . Whoops. Still somewhere at John’s house. “I’m a mess.”
“You’re a hot mess.” He offered his hands. “We might not get the filet mignon I was hoping for, but would you still care to dance?”
She held still and studied his face, a combination of boyish freckles and the faint worry lines of a new parent. Tired as he was, a sparkle still danced in his ocean-blue eyes.
Jem’s actions tonight soothed the doubts she’d had about the change God had wrought in his heart. A man who loved like this—in the face of rejection, disappointment, and hurt—was a man she might be able to trust again.
He wiggled his fingers at her.
Natalie stepped into his arms and pulled his head down.
She slipped a hand along the slight stubble on his jaw, her face a breath away, then brought her lips to his. She kept her kiss sweet and light, and after a moment Jem’s hands rested on her upper arms. Her fingers brushed Jem’s hair as she reveled in being in his arms again. He’d made mistakes, yes. Did the thought of being hurt by him again still terrify her? Completely.
But she was tired of being apart from him when every inch of her wanted otherwise.
Pulling back a fraction, she opened her eyes and smiled at him.
The sparkle in Jem’s eyes had fanned into a blaze. “Uh-uh. Come back here.” He caught her lips once more, one hand on her waist and the other cupping her jaw. He deepened the kiss, and a flare alighted deep inside Natalie. She stood on tiptoe and wound both arms around his neck, tasting the lemonade he’d pinched from his father’s fridge.
Jem held her tight, kissed her as if he’d been waiting to do this for years. He kissed her cheeks, her temple, her forehead, then brushed her lips again.
Natalie dragged her eyes open as Jem finally rested his forehead on hers. One hand gripped his collar, the other slid along his neck.
Jem drew in a ragged breath, opened his eyes. “Is this another I’ll-kiss-Jem-but-then-tell-him-it’s-not-happening-again thing?” His arms tightened around her. He brushed her lips again, spoke with his mouth barely touching hers. “’Cos I’d really like to convince you otherwise.”
She smiled and pulled his head back down.
33
Could today get any worse?
Lili’s foot slipped on wet asphalt as she pushed against the trunk of Natalie’s car. To passersby, it looked like Smurfette and Gru from Despicable Me were pushing a green VW Bug—steered by Big Bird—off the side of the road, still fifteen blocks from Jem’s place. Or at least, attempting to push. The car didn’t budge—just like the cold wall of silence between her and Nick for the past week.
Lili’s hand slid on the slick bumper, and her eight-inch fake nose hit the trunk and squished her real nose.
Beside her, Natalie turned, blue trickles running down her face as rain eroded her body paint. “Are you okay?”
“I think I just broke Gru’s nose.”
Natalie rubbed her temples like she had a headache. “I can fix that. As long as the bird stays out of the rain, we’ll be fine. Let’s push.”
Lili returned her attention to the steaming vehicle before her, torn between praying for help and pleading with God to keep anyone she knew from seeing her.
Natalie had enlisted her mother’s and Lili’s help in an elementary school skit earlier that afternoon for Wildfire. Natalie had been freaking out at the thought of stepping out in front of the kids—apparently her public-speaking fear extended to seven-year-olds—and she’d begged Lili to help.
It had sounded great at the time—Lili had a free period at the end of the day and needed a distraction from moping about Nick.
But now with her change of clothes at home and cold water soaking through the shoulder padding that formed Gru’s figure, she wondered why she’d said yes.
Natalie threw her weight behind the broken-down car, and Lili pushed beside her. The vehicle gained some momentum, and as they pushed, Natalie’s mom steered the car onto the shoulder of the road.
Lili executed her best Gru victory dance, complete with a shuffle and stanky leg, and a truck slowed beside her and beeped its horn. She froze as Nick’s dual-cab pickup rolled to a stop.
You have got to be kidding me.
The two of them had barely spoken in a week, and this was how he found her?
His window wound down, and he peered through the rain at her. “Please tell me I can be Buzz Lightyear.”
She folded her arms and tried to look as dignified as she could in a bald cap and prosthetic nose. “What are you doing?”
“Offering the Nickelodeon channel a lift home.”
“We’re not Nickelodeon characters.”
“Nick!” Natalie’s blue face appeared in Nick’s other window.
He jolted, then grinned and lowered the glass that separated them.
“Can you give us a lift home?” she asked.
“Jump in,” Nick said with a sly glance toward Lili.
Natalie and her mom jumped into the back seat, and Mrs. Groves tried to pull the door closed.
“Your tail feathers are sticking out,” Lili said.
Mrs. Groves gathered her plumage as Lili pushed the door shut behind her. She dragged herself around to Nick’s passenger seat.
Nick exchanged pleasantries with the older women as they started off toward home, before a country music station filled the silence. Natalie and her mom started discussing Natalie’s internship, and Nick glanced at Lili. “How are you?”
“Fine.” She kept her tone neutral.
“Grace is kinda worried.”
“Why?”
“She said you failed your math test, and you’ve
been acting weird. Why haven’t you told her about . . . the stuff?”
“Who says I haven’t?”
“She did. She had no idea why you’d failed or what was going on.”
Lili huffed. “She’s a gigantic blabbermouth.” A blabbermouth who’d grown increasingly snippy that Lili was keeping a secret. They’d barely even messaged this week.
“Look, I wanted to say I’m sorry about—”
“Not here,” she hissed with a look toward the melting Smurf and oversized bird in the back.
“Fine. We’ll talk in code.” Nick glanced toward the back seat, but Natalie and Mrs. Groves were engrossed in their discussion. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you about blank. It’s not that I really thought you would lie, but it was just a lot to take in—she’s like my mom, you know? More than my real mom is. But, well, I asked her.”
Sitting in the truck, the massive shoulder and body padding she wore puffed up around Lili. She shrank into it like a turtle and clenched her hands together. “I don’t care.”
“She admitted it.”
She snapped her head toward Nick. “She what?”
“But she said it’s over. He ended it. The day your Mom got back from her conference. She said they were only actually together for about a week. The week Chloe was here.”
Her eyes slid shut. No. If that witch was telling the truth, that meant Dad hadn’t lied at the beginning, when he said the kiss was a one-time thing. Maybe he’d been fighting the way he felt.
It meant Lili’s behavior on the Sunday she smoked could’ve been what finally pushed him into Miss Kent’s arms.
It meant the whole shemozzle might be partly her fault.
And since Dad had still only made feeble attempts to contact her, he probably resented her for it.
“She said she’s sorry,” Nick said. “She’s been lonely for a long time.”
Lili’s jaw dropped. He was making excuses for her?
