You're Still The One

by Janet Dailey

  She worked as a waitress, and after rent was paid we did not have much money, but she showed me how to make used clothing, bought from Goodwill or garage sales, look modern and stylish.

  My mother encouraged me to Show your Montana style! Looking back, I realize she was simply trying to charge me up and make me feel more confident about looking different from the other kids because we couldn’t afford new clothes.

  We sewed on lace, ruffles, and satin to make boring shirts or skirts fun. We made earrings, necklaces, pins, and bracelets out of beads, crystals, and charms she found at garage sales. Other kids loved them and wanted to come over and make them, too.

  We sewed on fancy patches to hide the holes in my jeans. I wore cool belts made out of rope or leather, fastened up with buckles wrapped in glass beads. I wore embroidered headbands and wristbands and ribbons that matched my outfits. We even added silk flowers or ribbons to hats, and I’d wear those to school, too.

  My mother knew how to make regular clothes original, and she taught me everything she knew. Most especially she taught me how to keep my chin up. We may be temporarily poor, honey, but hard work will change that. Chin up, shoulders back. We’ll show the world who we are!

  After her parents died in a car accident, she found out they had left her enough money in their estate to go back to school. They had disowned her when she married my dad, hoping the pressure would make her walk out of the marriage. She went back to school while waitressing full-time, earned her teaching degree, and taught second grade at my school.

  My mother had been the principal’s favorite waitress: She knew how to make her customers feel cared about, so I knew MaeLynn would do that for the kids, too, he’d told me.

  I remembered how scared she was with my dad, how she cowered in corners, how he intimidated and insulted her, called her stupid and worthless, backhanded and shoved her. She was never allowed money and he accused her of having boyfriends, yelling right in her face. He wouldn’t let her go anywhere; she could not drive his truck. Looking back now, she was incredibly brave to leave and take me with her, because he had crushed her spirit and her will.

  I remembered how he came to see us in Bigfork about two years after we left. My mother had changed her name, so he probably couldn’t find us at first, and when he got good and fed up with no one to browbeat, I’m sure he’d had to hire an investigator.

  When he landed on our doorstep, my mother took the gun off the top shelf of our bookcase, opened the door, and pointed it at his forehead.

  “Get the hell off my property, Ben,” she said, real quiet, then cocked the gun. My mother had become a new woman since she’d escaped from his violent clutches.

  My dad could not have been more shocked if a monkey had dropped from the sky. “You wouldn’t shoot me,” he told her.

  She shot clean through the deck about two inches from his feet and I saw him jump in shock. She shot a second time when he didn’t leave. He swore at her something awful but turned around and backed off. He was running by the time he got to his truck, and she shot two bullets right into the cab.

  He didn’t come back. She looked at me and said, “I will not let you live with that monster again, my love. I failed you once, but I will not fail you again. Let’s make apple muffins, shall we?”

  We both trembled that day, making the apple muffins, but she was taking no more crap. Hence the gun, to help alleviate the crap.

  After that avalanche everything changed. My dad came to get me. I stayed with a neighbor until he arrived. Her name was Mrs. Ashley. She cried over me many times and told me, “What a wonderful mother you had . . . we’ll all miss her, honey. Tragedy for you, for everyone here . . . all her students crying . . . heavens to Betsy, why did this have to happen?”

  My dad drove up, engine growling. He hardly glanced at Mrs. Ashley, slammed the door to his truck, which still had the bullet holes in it, and snapped, “Let’s go, Allie. Move your butt. I drove all the way out here to get you and I don’t got time to waste.”

  Mrs. Ashley and her husband were appalled. Mr. Ashley said to my dad, “Now, maybe we should talk for a sec . . .”

  “Who the hell are you? There ain’t nothing to talk about,” my dad said, his face scrunched up and angry, his scars so prominent. I didn’t know why he was angry at Mr. and Mrs. Ashley. “This is a big inconvenience to me, coming to get this kid.”

  “Her mother just died—” Mrs. Ashley had one hand to her heart and the other on my shoulder.

  “How about if you leave Allie with us for the school year,” Mr. Ashley said, adding his hand to my other shoulder.

  “No. That ain’t happening. Her whore of a mother kidnapped her and now she’s coming with me.”

  “How about another month—” Mrs. Ashley said.

  “I said no.” My dad’s hands clenched into fists.

  “Can she come and visit this summer?”

  “What are you, deaf?” my dad shouted, chest puffed out. “She’s not coming back.”

  He gave me time to pack: “Five minutes and not a minute more, apple-core face.” I cringed hearing that name.

  Mrs. Ashley raced to help me. She gave me one of her suitcases, and while she packed my clothes, I packed things from my mother in my backpack: a locket from her deceased mother and a harmonica from her deceased father, whom she never stopped missing; her favorite books; two china plates with tiny purple flowers that we loved to eat pie off of; three dessert cookbooks; and two aprons with apples, one for her, one for me. I grabbed three photos of us together in Montana. There was no time to get anything else as my dad was already shouting from outside to “Move, Allie, move!”

  I looked longingly at my picture frames with the pink ballerinas, my mother’s tablecloth with the yellow tulips, her perfume bottles, the tiny mirror with the ornate gold frame, her photograph of an apple orchard bathed in sunlight.

  My dad’s horn honked incessantly. “Get out here right now, Allie. Don’t piss me off!”

  Scared to death, I went tumbling out of the house with my backpack, Mrs. Ashley following behind with the suitcase, swearing at my dad. She called him many bad names, I remember that, and my mother had always said she was a God-fearing woman.

  We went speeding down the road, me waving and crying out the window, our blue house fading in the distance. I would not see my swing set again, my bedroom with the yellow walls, the kitchen wall where my mother had painted a mural of a tulip field. I had helped paint the tulips.

  My dad told me to “Sit down, strap up, and shut up,” and that’s what I’d done. He then grilled me the whole way about my mother and her “harem of boyfriends,” and said terrible things about her. “I hope you’re not like your mother. I won’t tolerate you being like her—loose, wild, slutty.”

  I told him she wasn’t like that at all and he punched my face, loosening a tooth. I turned toward the window and willed myself not to cry.

  That was a microcosm of what happened for the next five years. I willed myself not to cry in front of him and stuffed my emotions down, hard as I could, until I was on autopilot, hands over my head, cowering, but somehow also fighting to live.

  I rolled out the crust on the counter, my hands trembling.

  After I made that apple pie, I made another one, then another.

  It was apple pie therapy. I realized how much I’d missed making pies.

  Why had my dad been so horrible? Why hadn’t he had any redeeming qualities? Why had he been so unkind to his wife and to me, a little girl who had lost her mother?

  I was so angry at him. I often thought I hated him. The hate was hurting me, though, not him.

  I would have to figure out who to give the apple pies to.

  I had apple pie for dinner that night.

  I did not look up at Jace’s house.

  But I did hear my dad’s voice in my head. You will always be a no one, Allie. Like your mother. You’re trailer trash. I’m trailer trash. You think that doctor’s ever gonna marry you? Yep. You do. Can
ya hear me laughing? You’re not good enough for him and you’re stupider than I thought.

  Mr. Jezebel Rooster woke me again when the sky was still black, the morning still sleeping. I stomped outside, I don’t know why. It’s not like the rooster speaks English and would understand my swear words or that he would enter into some sort of mediation with me on how we could resolve our conflict.

  When he saw me he cock-a-doodle-doo’d again. I yelled at him to stop it. He did.

  I turned away. He cock-a-doodled.

  This went on twice more. The second time I turned and saw the lights of Jace’s truck coming down his driveway, toward the road. He would be leaving for the hospital. Through the darkness I saw him get out of the car and wave. He must have seen me in those headlights, railing against a rooster.

  “Good morning, Allie.”

  “It’s not a good morning,” I yelled back at him. “It’s too early. Come and get this rooster.”

  “I think I’ll do that soon.”

  I heard him laugh as I stomped back into my house.

  Jezebel Rooster cock-a-doodle-doo’d again.

  I missed Jace.

  That afternoon, I went on a careful, slow bike ride on my fancy bike in my fancy bike clothes.

  It reminded me that I’m not poor.

  It reminded me that Jace and I used to love to bike together around Yellowstone.

  It reminded me that we would not ride together again.

  I pedaled faster.

  Chapter Eight

  The storm hit unexpectedly and took out the electricity two evenings later.

  My cell phone rang as a blast of rain smacked my windows. I picked it up and said hello without looking at the name.

  “Hi, Allie.”

  “Jace.” My voice squeaked.

  “How about if I come down and get you? No one on your side of the road has electricity.”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  In the distance I heard an earsplitting crack, like a lightning bolt, and I jumped. The lightning bolt kept crackling. “Hang on.” I kept the cell phone in my hand and ran to my window in time to see one of the giant trees behind my dad’s house crash down about six feet from the window.

  I screamed, then yelled, “Oh my gosh!”

  “What is it? What happened?” Jace shouted. “Allie!”

  “A tree crashed down right by the house. It was so close.” I heard another earsplitting crack and I cupped my hand to the window only to see a second tree fall.

  “I heard that,” Jace said. “I am coming to get you. Try not to argue much or I will have to pick you up, throw you over my shoulder like a knight in shining armor, and shove you onto my horse. Don’t think I won’t do it.”

  “I can go to a hotel.”

  “You can go to Hotel Jace. It’s close by, it’s cheap, and I don’t have to work tomorrow, so I’ll make you breakfast.”

  Trouble. Oh, that was trouble. He was trouble. “I need a room for one.”

  “You’ll have it.”

  “With a lock.”

  “I don’t have any locks on my doors.”

  “That figures.”

  “You can have your room for one, though.”

  I felt like I’d been in a room for one my whole life.

  “You can come in my room and tell me good night, Allie, then go to your room for one. I’ll be there in three minutes.”

  “Storms are great as long as they stay outside,” I drawled, sitting in front of Jace’s stone fireplace holding a huge mug of hot chocolate. He had even added marshmallows. He knew I loved marshmallows. He did not have towering trees around his home, and I was grateful for it.

  Beside me on the couch, he nodded. “I agree. I do not want to see wind, rain, thunder, or lightning in my living room. But I do like storms, like you. Remember that one in Yellowstone . . .”

  “We were in that tent that wouldn’t stay up, and the thunder and lightning were right overhead, the rain poured down like a river, we were soaked . . .”

  “And laughing . . .”

  We chatted on, as if all was well between us, as if I hadn’t darted out like my hair was on fire the other day, telling him we couldn’t see each other, and he hadn’t manhandled me into his truck. I’d even snatched up two of my apple pies when Jace came to pick me up. When I saw the smile on his face as he took them, it about melted my heart into a puddle. “Thanks, hon—” He stopped, his eyes crinkling in the corners. “Thanks, Allie. These are going to be delicious. I’ve missed your apple pies.”

  We drove through the pounding rain and buffeting winds, another lightning strike making the sky glow, and arrived three minutes later at his house. He put the pies on the counter. I cut one into slices, he got the plates, I got the forks, and he started a pot of coffee. We worked in familiar, happy tandem. I squashed down how much I liked the domesticity part of it.

  I heard about his day, and was fascinated by all he’d done in the emergency room, the people he’d met and helped, his compassion and empathy for them. He heard about mine. He asked questions about my past job, what I was thinking for the future. I told him about my latest crime thriller. He told me about a medical journal article he read. I told him about my short and careful bike ride. He told me to stay off my bike until I was healed, then he told me about a ride he’d been on. It was normal husband-wife talk. The comforting, familiar, happy sort.

  Sitting on the leather couch, about a foot away from Jace, the storm thundering, the fire burning, I knew I was in dangerous territory. Dangerous and lusty.

  Why had I agreed to come to his house when I could have climbed into my car and zipped to a hotel for fear of falling trees? Clearly I am a woman who likes emotional torture and invites sexual frustration into her life.

  I stared into the flames of the fire and tried to distract my traitorous heart, but it would not be tamed or lassoed up. Sex with Jace was like falling into heaven on a feather bed with candles all around . . .

  We were laughing about something and then . . . I don’t know who moved first. I may have been the guilty party. I probably was. In fact, it’s likely that it was me, sexually frustrated woman. When his lips came down on mine, I relaxed into him as if I’d kissed him an hour before and had been kissing him for years. His arms came around me and my arms linked around his neck and that kiss was . . . deep and delicious.

  It was exactly as it had been before, that blazing passion back, all consuming.

  It was the same as when we were in the lake at Yellowstone, body to body, magical and seductive, the constellations overhead.

  It was the same as when we held each other through long nights, talking and laughing inches apart, camping near a river.

  It was the same as when we kissed near a waterfall . . .

  But it was different, too. The years had passed, I had missed him to the core of who I am, and sheer, throbbing pain had come between us, which simply seemed to make things . . .

  . . . absolutely, positively out of control.

  I could not get enough of that man’s kisses. I could not stop my hands from wandering over familiar territory. Jace was thicker now, more muscled, all man. When he flipped me over onto the couch and came down between my legs, I wrapped them around his waist and tilted my head back so he could kiss my neck—and lower.

  We fell into our rhythm, our beat, as if the rhythm had never been lost, the beats never gone. I arched into his hips, his fingers undid my pink blouse, I ran my hands down his back and up his shirt, feeling that tight, warm muscle, his hands molding me to him. Both of us were breathing hard, panting, a moan here, a groan there . . .

  I could think of nothing but him, nothing but my own passion for him, for Jace. Lust kills brain cells and mine were clearly dead as I unbuttoned his shirt, my hands flying, my mouth to his . . . utterly lost.

  It was when his hands were so adeptly unbuttoning my jeans that I pulled away, pushed at his chest, and said, “Oh no. Not again,” and “Please stop.”

  He stopped. We
were both out of breath, both in the midst of some really excellent arousal, and yet . . . I could not go there again with him.

  “Stop, please.” I hadn’t needed to say it again, though. He had already stopped, his face tight with frustration and disbelief.

  “What? Why, honey?”

  “See, Jace,” I said, my words harsh. “This is why you and I cannot be friends.” I tried to get my breath back, tried not to cry. “We’re not friend material. We never will be.”

  “What are you talking about? We are friends, Allie. We were best friends, and we have this, too, the passion—”

  “No, no, we don’t have this. No passion. No to passion. Get off of me.”

  “Allie—” I saw the hurt in his eyes; I heard the rawness of his voice.

  “Get off.”

  He put his forehead to mine for a long second, his chest heaving, my chest heaving, and he whispered, “Oh my God.” Then he got off and I scrambled away from that couch, my pink blouse fully open, my white lace bra unsnapped, my jeans unbuttoned, my hair all over the place. His shirt was open, too, all the way, and I tried to ignore that he is a smolderingly hot man.

  I tried to snap my bra, but my fingers would not work.

  He stood up, towering over me, warm and soft and huggable. Damn.

  “What the hell is going on, Allie?”

  I was breathing so hard I might have been embarrassed, but he was, too. My whole body was tingling. I had to look away before his body tantalized me way too much and I gave in. “Damn, Jace. Turn around or something.”

  “Why? I think I’ve seen everything.”

  I inhaled to steady my racing heart. “You look way too sexy after we’ve been messing around, and I don’t want to jump back on that couch with you.”

  “I’d like you to jump back on the couch with me.” His tone was edgy, angry. “Why are you pulling away?”

  “Because I’m a wreck.” I wanted to get back on that couch so much I ached.

  “You are not a wreck,” he said, his voice sharp and frustrated. I didn’t blame him. “Why do you say that?”