She made one more stop on the way back to the cottage. At a small grocery store, she bought lunch meat, wheat bread, cereal, milk, and half a watermelon. She had no idea how she was going to eat half a watermelon by herself, but it looked too tempting to turn down.
On the street beside the cottage, Jillian grabbed two bags and headed up the wooden walk. She'd have to go back for the others. As she came around the corner, she saw Ty sitting on the front steps.
"Hey," he called.
She found herself smiling. "You're just in time for lunch," she called to him, tossing her keys. "Bags are in the trunk."
He caught the keys in midair and passed her on the wooden walk. "You got it."
Chapter 3
"Thanks for the lunch. Love to stay longer but I better get back on the stand so my relief can move down the beach. The watermelon was great." Ty trotted down the steps, lifting his hand in the universal peace sign.
Laughing, Jillian signed back. "Have a good afternoon."
"You, too." He turned and jogged backwards up the path, lifting his feet high in the hot sand. "Hey, my parents are having this annual barbeque thing tonight at the house. Want to come?"
She hesitated. She felt uncomfortable in social groups. Not knowing who you were made you an outcast before you even walked into the party. But Angel had told her that one of the best ways to get back into sync with others was to spend time with them, chatting, having a cup of coffee. Jillian guessed that extended to backyard barbeques, too.
"Come on," Ty coaxed. "Just a few neighbors, friends, my family. My dad will be making his famous ribs, and there'll be plenty of cold brewskies."
"Maybe I'll stop by."
"Nope. You're not getting out of it that easily. I'll come get you. That will give my Aunt Carmen something to talk about besides my mom's lousy potato salad. I'll probably go home and shower after work. Pick you up at six-thirty?"
It sounded an awful lot like he was making a date with her, and Jillian didn't know if she was ready for that. He was, after all, barely more than a kid and she... she was—"Ty," she called after him.
But it was too late. He had turned and run up the sand dune, disappearing over the other side.
Jillian spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning out the dish and food cupboards in the kitchen, wiping the dust from the shelves and clearing the cobwebs. She washed every dish with the tiny flower pattern and stacked them neatly in their place. She didn't know if it was the china itself, the kitchen, or just the dull routine of housekeeping, but somehow she found the simple domestic tasks comforting.
At five-thirty, hot and sweaty from the work, she took a shower and dressed in a pair of jean shorts, a white tee, and her new flip-flops. Ready, she went out on the front porch to wait for Ty. There was a cool breeze off the ocean that blew through her still-damp hair, tickling the back of her neck. Today while cleaning, her hair had made her hot, and she had registered a mental note to go out tomorrow and find some elastics to put it up in a ponytail. It was amazing how many things a woman needed when she was starting out with nothing.
Jillian leaned on the front rail and stared out at the waving dune grass. She wondered if somewhere, in some bathroom, she kept a pack of elastics. It made sense, considering the length of her hair. Somehow that made her sad. What if she never made it back to the place that had been her home, back to those hair elastics? What if she never again saw her possessions again? Rode in her own car, slept in her own house? What if she never again ate her favorite meal because she couldn't remember what it was?
Jillian felt her chest tighten with anxiety, and she reined herself in before all the what-ifs overwhelmed her. She knew that she dwelled on these trivial things to keep from thinking about the bigger picture, but that bigger picture was what she knew she needed to consider.
What if she never discovered who she had been? What then? Even worse, what if she never found out how she ended up in the emergency room, dumped on the pavement? What if she never found out who had tried to kill her? Could she ever be safe, not knowing?
Jillian had left Virginia on the pretense of finding herself, discovering her identity. She told herself she came to Albany Beach simply because this was where the road led her. The truth was, she was hiding here. She just didn't know from whom.
The sound of an approaching motorcycle broke Jillian from her melancholic thoughts. She locked the cottage door behind her, let the screen door go, and went down the steps. She met Ty on the wooden walk alongside the cottage. He was wearing a pair of old shorts, a surfing tee, and his ever-present sunglasses. Under his arm was a motorcycle helmet.
"You came for me on the motorcycle?" she asked, not sure how she felt about the idea. Motorcycles were dangerous, weren't they?
He tossed the helmet to her. It was the old style, without a Plexiglas shield. "Surely a woman who knows a '58 Chief likes riding motorcycles."
She followed him toward the street, pulling on the white helmet and fastening the chin strap. "I'm not so sure about this going to your parents' for dinner. Can't we just go grab a burger at the diner?"
Ty reached his bike and straddled it. "Nope. It's not Tuesday. Not burger night. Besides, I told Mom and Dad all about you, and I want them to meet you. Hop on."
Jillian took a deep breath and climbed on behind Ty.
"Just hold on to me," he said, reaching behind to take her hands and wrap them around his waist. He had started the bike so he had to shout over the rumble of the old motor. "And if I lean, you lean. Ready?"
She tightened her arms around Ty's waist, thinking how good it felt to have the physical contact. Though it scared her, it was something she missed. When everyone was a stranger around you, there wasn't much touching, and when there was, it was only impersonal; doctor's exams, blood tests. Since she awoke in the hospital in the intensive care unit, no one had hugged her but Angel.
"I'm ready," she hollered.
The bike shot forward, and Jillian gave a little involuntary cry as she lifted her feet off the pavement to prop them on the footrests. She should have worn sneakers. But Ty was wearing flip-flops, too. And no helmet. She knew both were unsafe, and yet a part of her yearned for that indestructible feeling she knew went only with youth.
Ty picked up speed, and they flew around the corner out onto a broad, tree-lined street. Jillian could feel her hair whipping behind her and hear the wind whistling. There was something about the sensation of the speed on the back of the bike that made her smile. She felt, if just for a moment, that she was leaving the whole mess her life had become behind. She felt like she was flying.
They zoomed across town, through yellow lights, around tight corners, always just above the speed limit. Ty waved to other motorists, to a postman walking down a sidewalk with a mailbag on his shoulder, even to the cop she had seen at the diner the day before, who cruised by in one of the city's police cars. The ride was scary, but invigorating, and when Ty turned into a residential area and pulled up in front of a two-story frame house, complete with white picket fence and barking dog, it was too soon for Jillian for the ride to end.
She hopped off the bike, pulling the helmet off her head and shaking out her hair.
Ty was grinning as he climbed off.
"You're crazy, you know that?" she said.
He laughed and reached out to brush some hair off her face. An intimate gesture, as exhilarating as the ride had been. "True. But what's makes you say that?"
"Because you were speeding back there when you waved at that policeman."
"Him?" He gave a wave of dismissal. "That was McCormick, my sister's old boyfriend. He'd never dare give me a speeding ticket for eight over the limit. I caught him and my sister bare-assed on my parents' living room couch when I was fourteen. He's owed me ever since for not ratting on him."
Ty's grin was, once again, infectious. "Even so"—she laughed, propping the helmet on the bike's worn leather seat—"that will only keep you from getting a ticket. It won't keep you from being scrape
d off the pavement with a shovel when you hit a tree."
"I didn't hear you complaining on the ride over here," he teased, starting up the driveway.
"Only because I was too frightened for my life."
"Yeah, right." He reached back and grabbed her hand as if it was the most natural thing. "Come on and meet my folks before my dad gets too plastered and my mom starts threatening to leave him." He looked back at her over one shoulder. "Been happening every Fourth of July barbeque since I was a kid. It's practically a family tradition."
Ty led Jillian through a screened-in breezeway, between the house and the garage, out into the fenced-in backyard where there was music coming from a boom box set up on a picnic table. The Rolling Stones; she knew the song. The yard was packed with people—adults, teens, kids, and at least two racing, barking mixed-breed dogs.
"You said just a few people," she whispered in Ty's ear, suddenly feeling very self-conscious. There had to be close to a hundred people crammed into the backyard. The sound buzzed in her ears—voices of conversation, laughter, dogs barking, Mick Jagger crooning, and the occasional child's shriek of glee. For Jillian, it was almost overwhelming.
"Oh, this is a just a few people by my dad's standard. You ought to see the Christmas party. Mom says they're going to have to start renting the fire hall if he doesn't stop inviting people." He tightened his grip on her hand and led her around a clump of middle-aged men and women arguing over which episode of their favorite sitcom was the best.
"Dad," Ty called, weaving his way to a smoking stainless-steel grill on the far side of a cedar deck that extended out from French doors on the house. "I want you to meet Jillian."
She offered her free right hand, digging for Ty's last name. She knew he'd told her. "Mr. Addison, nice to meet you."
"Call me Dick." He pumped her hand like a high-powered executive. "It's not my name, but everyone does."
Ty grimaced. "Dad, that joke never worked twenty years ago, I don't know why you're still trying it."
"Kids." Dick Addison gestured toward his son, who towered over him, with an expensive bottle of beer. "You send 'em to college and suddenly they think they're smarter than you," he said good-naturedly.
Ty glanced sideways to Jillian. "Okay, so if we wanted to catch him sober, we should have gotten here earlier."
Ty's father laughed heartily and patted his son on the back, sloshing beer on his shirt. "Get yourselves a plate. We'll have Dick's famous ribs coming off the grill any minute."
"Come on, I'll introduce you to his better half." Ty led her across the deck toward the house.
"Don't miss out on the ribs, Ty! My best batch yet."
Ty waved to his father over his head. "Be right back, Dad. Save me a side of pig." At the door, he stepped back to let Jillian pass.
She walked into an open, airy kitchen-dining room tastefully decorated and cooled by central air. The table, spread with a red, white, and blue tablecloth, was loaded with dishes of potato salad, pasta salad, macaroni salad, deviled eggs, and anything else a cook could think to make using mayonnaise.
"Mom?" Ty hollered.
"In here." A woman who appeared to be in her late forties popped up from behind the counter. "Good, it's you. I need you to pull the baked beans out before they burn. I've asked your father twice to come in and do it for me, but he started with the Molson's at noon."
"No problem." Ty released Jillian's hand and walked around the corner of the counter to don red bandana-print hot mitts. "Mom, this is Jillian. The friend I told you about." He opened the oven and slid an enormous baking pan from the rack. "You want this on the dining room table?"
"Yes, dear, you'll see where I set out the hot pads." Mrs. Addison wiped her hands on a red and white dish-towel on the counter and extended one hand. "It's nice to meet you, Jillian. I'm Alice."
Jillian shook her hand. Ty had her hazel eyes. Warm, genuine. "It's nice to meet you. Thanks for having me."
"Well, you're certainly welcome." She rattled around in a drawer and came up with a large serving spoon. "Although to tell you the truth, you could have come without an invitation and no one would have noticed. Dick has invited so many people that it might as well be the whole town."
"Baked beans have landed," Ty said, returning and tossing the hot mitts on the counter. "Anything else before we get in line at Dick's Grill? He's afraid he's going to run out before I get some."
"Run out? Lord love a duck, he ordered three pigs from the butcher shop. I'll be taking ribs in my lunch to work for the next six weeks."
"Mom's a nurse at the hospital," Ty explained to Jillian. He looked back to his mother. "You need anything else, holler."
Alice waved her son away with a red hot mitt.
Ty grabbed Jillian's hand, and they made a break for the door. From a cooler against the house outside, he retrieved two beers, opening first hers, then his own. "We can sit over here, out of the fray."
"That would be good." She followed him off the deck, across the freshly cut grass to a free-standing porch swing under a huge tree near the fence. It was hot out and muggy, and the beer was refreshingly cool in her hand.
Ty sat down, patting the spot beside him. Jillian eased down, and he gave the swing a push. "To crazy parents," he said, hitting his beer bottle to hers.
"Crazy parents," she murmured.
For the next hour, they sat on the swing, ate two plates full of food Ty fetched for them, and talked. Ty got another beer; Jillian continued to nurse hers. They talked mostly about Ty's career plans, but he kept a running monologue going of the barbecue's attendees.
"You see The Skipper there?" Ty motioned to a big man in a shirt decorated with bright tropical flowers and parrots.
To her surprise, she recognized him. "You mean the mayor?"
He looked at her with exaggerated interest. "You know The Skipper?"
"I know the mayor. Well, I don't know him," she confessed. "He came in to the outpatient clinic at the hospital today while I was waiting to get my blood tests." She tilted her beer bottle to get the last swallow. "Why do you call him The Skipper?"
"Like on Gilligan's Island. Don't you think he looks just like Alan Hale Jr? Lots of people call him The Rug Man, but I like The Skipper."
She laughed because he did resemble the actor who had played the role. "Gilligan's Island? You're too young for that show. I'm too young."
"Nick at Night." He plucked her beer bottle from her hand and tossed it beside his two empties and their paper plates on the grass beside them. "A favorite pastime of college seniors cramming for exams."
She nodded. It was beginning to get dark outside. Someone had lit torches all over the yard, and there were lights along the back of the house, but the swing under the tree had fallen into the shadows. Ty slid his arm around the back of the swing to rest his hand on her far shoulder. "I know this is all kind of crazy and overwhelming for you, but I'm glad you came," he told her.
She looked at him. "Me, too."
Ty leaned forward to kiss her, and she didn't know what to do. The age difference between them, sitting in his parents' backyard—His mouth met hers before she had time to protest or duck. It was a quick kiss. Gentle. Sweet. He tasted like beer and the strangest sense of hope....
Ty was smiling when she lifted her lashes to look into his hazel eyes again. He hadn't pulled back, so they were almost nose to nose. He seemed like the most incredible person to her, so different than the type A, conservative woman she sensed she was. She just felt drawn to him. Drawn to his sense of adventure and fun.
Ty brushed the back of his fingertips against her cheek. "I was thinking—"
"Ty!" Alice Addison's call broke the moment, and he sat up to look in the direction of the house, cursing under his breath.
Alice stood on the edge of the cedar deck, staring into the twilight. "Ty, honey, you still here?"
"Still here, Mom!" He hopped off the swing, sending it backward. "Sorry. Be right back," he told Jillian as he loped off.
&
nbsp; Jillian let the swing go back and forth until it slowed of its own accord and then she stepped off. Retrieving the dirty paper plates and beer bottles from the grass, she cut across the lawn to the garbage cans lined up along the side of the yard. She dropped the plates into the closest can and was just about to release the bottles when a voice behind her startled her.
"Oops, those don't go in there."
She turned and, in the dim light, saw two men, similar in appearance in their early to mid-thirties, both with light brown hair, standing over one of the trash cans. She recognized one of them from somewhere. The diner, maybe? Or was it the grocery store?
"Recycling," he said, taking the three bottles from her. "They go here." He pointed to a different waste can.
"Thanks."
"Sure." He dropped the bottles into a can that, from the sound, contained more bottles. "Alan," he said, offering his hand. "I work with Alice at the hospital."
That was when she realized he was the man who had ducked in while she was having her blood taken today. "Jillian," she said. "A friend of Ty's."
"Nice to meet you." He smiled, not seeming to recognize her from earlier in the day. "This is Kevin James. He's an EMT for the county."
Kevin nodded shyly.
"Hi." She smiled. "Well, thanks for the recycling tip."
"You bet." The two men walked away. "Have a nice night," Kevin called to her.
"You, too."
Jillian stood for a moment in the dark beside the recycling bin, not sure where to go. What to do. She was beginning to feel a little claustrophobic. All these people. Everyone talking. Jimmy Buffett was singing now about that mythical place called Margaritaville.
She was ready to go home to the quiet of the cottage. To the relative safety she felt there. She cut across the lawn and entered the house through the same French doors Ty had taken her through before. No one was in the kitchen. It looked like wolves had been through the dining room, feeding on the great spread of food on the table. There was barely anything left but a few elbow macaroni noodles and a spoonful of baked beans. No Ty. Not even a sign of Mrs. Addison. Jillian would just go back outside and wait on the swing.
She'll Never Know Page 5
