Second Chances

by Abbie Williams

  I sipped my drink and closed my eyes for a moment, again feeling the sense of disorientation. When I opened them, Christy was again studying me openly. No time like the present. I grabbed the bull by the horns and said with sincerity, “I love Blythe. I love him with all my heart.”

  Her gaze shifted away and she pressed her lips together and rubbed them in the fashion of someone who has just applied lipstick. My heart wrenched, waiting, but then she fixed her eyes again on mine, pretty blue-gray eyes so much like her son’s, and said, “I know. He loves you too. I’ve never seen him this way.”

  “You don’t want to kill me?” I asked softly. “I have three daughters, you know, and if I thought for an instant—”

  But she cut off that sentence by touching my left hand lightly with her fingertips. Simultaneously she said, “No, of course not. When Bly is serious about something, I know it. He’s a good boy, and I get the sense that you’re a good woman.”

  “But?” I prompted hesitantly.

  She sighed. “But you and I both know it’s not as easy as that. And he might have to back to jail for a while. I don’t know. Fuck, I hope not. He doesn’t deserve it.”

  “What happened last spring?” I asked, enormously relieved that she had accepted the news so graciously.

  Her face twisted for a moment and then her gaze shifted up and to the left as she recalled past events. Finally she said, “I was dating a guy I met at work. Junior didn’t like him, but I couldn’t understand why until the night he slapped me for the first time. I didn’t say anything because I knew Junior would be mad. Bly’s always had a bad temper…that’s what got him into jail in the first place, for taking Tony’s car that day. Tony was his boss at the time, they worked construction together. Has he told you much about it?”

  I nodded, though ‘some’ would have been a more accurate answer.

  “Well, it was all tangled up. Bly is not a criminal, and I’m not saying that because he’s my son. He’s just not one. Believe me, I’ve dated real criminals, so I know the difference.” She laughed briefly, then nodded at my glass and asked, “Do you need another?”

  “Sure,” I told her, and she moved again around the kitchen, fixing us a second round. The digital clock on the microwave read 12:37, but I couldn’t think about bed yet. And I still had to call Jilly tonight.

  Christy resumed her story after a long sip. “Well, Bly was dating Tony’s younger sister at that time, Julianne. She was a pretty girl, but I didn’t like her. I couldn’t explain it exactly, just a gut instinct.”

  I’d heard about his ex-girlfriend Cindy, but this name was new, and there was a sudden part of me that didn’t want her to keep going. But I kept my mouth shut.

  “Tony and Bly weren’t best friends, but they got along pretty well until this one time Tony accused Bly of taking his tools. Blythe didn’t do it, and wouldn’t have. It turned out to be a misunderstanding, and Tony did apologize, but there was a rift after that. A mistrust. Tony would come over for barbeque some nights that summer, when Bly would be here with Julianne, and they all seemed to get along, but I could tell it was different. And then, what do you know, Julianne got pregnant.”

  I felt as though she’d slapped me. Or poured scalding water over my face. For a moment there was a roaring in my ears and then all I could hear was Blythe, back in the jail in Landon, saying, “But there are some things you don’t know about me.”

  “Oh shit, he hasn’t told you that,” Christy was observing, pulling me back to the current moment. Her voice and face were both stricken. “Shit, I didn’t mean to spring that on you. Shit.”

  “He has a child?” I asked then, my voice faint.

  Christy’s face twisted again, but this time with something akin to pain. She said, “No, but it’s because that woman, that Julianne, went and had an abortion. Didn’t even tell Bly she was going to do it.”

  I felt a fraction of breath return to my lungs. But then the weight of what she’d said pressed down on my heart. I reached and curled my right hand around her left, kitty-corner from me on the tabletop. I said, quietly, “I’m so sorry. What a horrible thing to do.” Oh Blythe, Blythe. I was aching with sympathy for him, but was human enough to also wonder why I hadn’t heard this from him.

  But he certainly must have his reasons. And I was flawed enough, in my own ways, to understand that.

  “It was horrible, totally cruel. She drove herself into Oklahoma City and then called Bly to tell him the news. He went crazy. And Tony was freaking out because Julianne gave him this sob story that Blythe had made her get an abortion, which was the furthest thing from the truth. They were at a job site, for Christ’s sake, and Tony told him he was fired and then punched him. They got into a fistfight and Blythe beat him pretty badly. And then took Tony’s car to get to the city. But he didn’t make it because Tony called the police and they got him first.”

  A jagged lump had formed in my throat as I examined the pieces of this story that I had never known. It was far worse than Blythe had alluded in the past few months. Now I began to understand why he didn’t want to talk about it, why his hometown could never be the same, as he’d told me that night we’d taken the canoes out for a midnight ride.

  “Oh my God,” I finally said, low, my throat dry in a way that could not be eased by my drink. Not at the moment.

  “He served three months of a nine-month sentence. And then was on parole for about a year. But nothing much happened until last spring when he came over here one night and Ron was drunk…shit, I was drunk too…and Ron had roughed me up, caught me by the hair. Bly saw the tail end and he just reacted. He grabbed the lid off the charcoal grill and slammed Ron across the face.” She covered her own face for a moment. From behind her palms she said, “It was horrible. But in his way, Bly was doing the right thing again, defending me.”

  “He would,” I said, and it was true. He defended the people he loved. I wanted to run back out into the night and chase his truck, find him. My heart stung with the desperate need to find him.

  “I managed to get Ron to drop any charges, the bastard,” Christy went on, her hands back on the tabletop. Her mascara was smudged and she suddenly looked more her age. “But now that doesn’t seem to matter on top of the parole violation. This is my fault and I’m so sorry, Joelle. I want him to be happy more than anyone, I can tell you that with all my heart.”

  I made a small sound, touched by her words. But at the moment I couldn’t find my own; the question I was dying to ask was like a husk in my throat. At last I managed, “Where is…Julianne now?”

  “California,” Christy said. “Her mother lives out there, somewhere. She’s never been back, and I honestly don’t know about Tony. I hope never to see that son of a bitch ever again. I’d take a frying pan to his head. The girl’s too. Don’t get me wrong, I believe a woman should have control of her body, but to go and do such a thing, when the father wanted the baby. Would have cared for it. Hell, I would have raised it if I’d realized she didn’t want it.”

  “Christy, I’m so sorry,” I said again, feeling grossly inadequate, at a total loss. “But thanks for telling me all of this.”

  “Are you angry?” she asked then, softly. Her eyes were so very much like her son’s.

  “No, God no,” I told her, honestly. “I just wish he would have told me.”

  “He will. It’s just so hard for him, still hurts him. He blames himself.” She sighed then, deeply, before adding, “I need to hit the hay. Thanks for talking, Joelle. It makes me glad to see my boy so happy. He’s never been in love before, I want you to know. But he’s in love with you.”

  My heart glowed at her words, forcing out some of the bleakness wedged there by her story. I said softly, “I love him too.”

  She patted my hand and minutes later had shown me to my room…Blythe’s old room, which would be mine for the night. I took a moment in the tiny bathroom between the two bedrooms, brushing my teeth and washing my face like usual, studying my eyes in the medicine cabi
net mirror above the smooth round basin of the sink. The whole bathroom was tiled in a stone-washed blue, and all of the towels were rich cobalt, though frayed at the edges. Christy must be fond of the shade, as her living room furniture was likewise covered in navy-blue denim.

  Oh God, Bly, my sweet, sweet man. Did you stand here that first night after you’d gotten home from jail and wonder what in the hell happened? And spent those terrible nights in a cell knowing your girlfriend had aborted your child without your consent. God, the baby wouldn’t even be a baby by now, but instead close to two, tearing around, calling you ‘Daddy.’ Oh Blythe…

  How did one move beyond that? In a million years, I would never have guessed that he harbored such a memory.

  Later I curled beneath the covers in Blythe’s old bed. The room was small; I had a hard time imagining Bly sleeping in this space. I smiled slightly at the thought, bending my legs beneath the covers, gazing up at the ceiling light above the bed as Blythe had probably done a thousand times in this exact spot. There was a narrow, curtainless window that faced west; I could see the moon in its arch toward that horizon, and stacked my hands under my head to watch it, despite how tired I was after everything that had happened in the past 48 hours.

  Chapter Four

  The next thing I knew it was morning, and Blythe’s voice was coming from the kitchen. I rolled to one elbow and knuckled my eyes. The room was dim in the early-morning light, but the uncovered window allowed me to see the pale sky with its promise of a sunny day. Bly was saying, “Don’t make breakfast, Mom, we’ll go out,” and Christy responded in a murmur too low for me to catch. A second later there was a tap on the bedroom door, and my heart turned a cartwheel; before I could speak Christy said, this time audibly, “Junior, don’t you dare, Joelle is sound asleep. She and I sat up talking until the coyotes came out.”

  He laughed, just outside the door, and as much as I longed to call out to him, push back the covers and pull him into bed, I knew in a million years I couldn’t do that. At least not at the moment. Then Rich’s voice joined the group, and I knew I better get my ass up and moving. I found my brush by leaning over and rooting through my bag, then grabbed my robe from the floor, snaking my arms into it before daring to emerge further, mostly because the window was uncovered. There was a small mirror on the wall above a chest of drawers, and I brushed through my hair; it was the consistency of cornsilk here in the dry air of Oklahoma, nothing like the humidity of the lake country back home. I debated wearing my robe to the bathroom, but felt too exposed, and in the end dressed in my clothes from last night, minus underwear, toting my overnight bag as I left the bedroom. I would shower and then put on something clean.

  Everyone was in the kitchen, talking, and I felt absurdly shy for a moment as three heads turned towards me. Blythe grinned and came over at once, and my shyness dissipated instantly into gladness as he caught me in a quick, hard hug and whispered, “Morning, baby,” against my left temple.

  “Morning,” I returned sleepily, as he drew back and used both hands to smooth my hair. I looked hard into his eyes, the memory of my conversation with Christy foremost in my thoughts, but I had to wait for him to tell me on his own. Or at least refrain from mentioning anything until we could be alone. I resisted the urge to pull his head to me and cradle him.

  “You sleep okay?” he asked, his eyes all over me since his hands could not be at the moment. From the kitchen, Christy said, her voice full of teasing, “Bly, let her have some space. Jeez, son.”

  He was dressed in a jeans and a faded red t-shirt that advertised what was undoubtedly a local restaurant, a place called Brandt’s Behemoth Burgers, hair tied back in its usual fashion. He looked incredible. He said, “According to Gramps, this has to go today,” motioning to his ponytail.

  “What? Why?” I asked.

  From behind Blythe, Rich responded, “He needs to look more clean-cut. Joan suggested it when we talked this morning.” Leave it to my mother to horn her way into something over a thousand miles from her current location. I reached, again a little shy with both Rich and Christy looking on, and gathered Bly’s long dark-blond hair into my right hand, twisting my fingers around a strand.

  “You won’t mind?” he asked, the right side of his lips tipping into a half-apologetic grin.

  “No…well, maybe a little,” I amended. “I do love your hair.”

  “Bly, it’s a good idea,” Rich said. “And it’ll grow back.”

  Bly winked at me and planted a quick kiss flush on my lips. “Hurry and get ready, and we’ll go get breakfast.”

  Thirty minutes later we were seated at a diner in downtown Brandt; it was just like Landon was for me, as in everyone who tinkled the bell coming into the place knew Christy and Blythe and stopped to make small talk. Rich was across from me and while Bly and Christy were chatting with an elderly woman, I leaned forward, my menu bent at a 45 degree angle against the table.

  “What else has Mom said?” I asked him, and the skin around Rich’s kind brown eyes crinkled into a web of wrinkles as he smiled at me, knowing exactly what I meant.

  “Honey, she’s just worried for you. And your sister is angry that you haven’t talked to her yet, just the girls. But you’ll hear about that soon enough,” and he winked at me before lowering his gaze to regard his own menu. “I’m missing Shore Leave and Ellen’s breakfast right about now.”

  I felt a flash of homesickness as he spoke, but at that moment Bly rubbed his hand along my spine, gently and almost absently as he continued his conversation with Christy and the grandmotherly woman who stood by our table. His hand was warm, and comforting, and I realized in the same instant that my idea of home had been altered. My daughters would always be mine, but they were growing up and would make their way into the world before I knew it. Here with Blythe was my home, so to speak, and I tipped my head against his shoulder for the length of two heartbeats.

  Rich drove Christy home after breakfast, while I remained with Blythe downtown. First on our agenda was his haircut, which Christy arranged over the phone.

  “I used to work with her at Bob’s,” Christy told Bly while we were still eating breakfast. “You remember Maggie, right?”

  Bly nodded, his mouth full of toast.

  “She’ll do a good job,” Christy reassured.

  Twenty minutes later Bly was seated in a swivel chair in the small, sunny salon. An old Faith Hill song played on a small radio at the front desk, propped beside a tall, clear-glass vase jammed with sunflowers. I stopped to admire them before settling onto a faded-yellow wing chair in the waiting area.

  “You want it all gone?” Maggie was asking, her tone incredulous as she held up Blythe’s ponytail with one hand, a pair of skinny, hot-pink scissors poised in the other.

  Blythe, his long legs crossed at the ankle, arms braced on the edges of the chair, winced slightly. But he affirmed, gamely enough, “All of it, Maggie. Military short.”

  The vinyl wrap that covered him from neck to hips crackled as he shifted again, angling a glance my way and shaking his head. The expression in his eyes was one of defeat. I blew him a kiss.

  “But Junior, you have such great hair,” Maggie lamented, flipping his long ponytail this way and that. Her own hair was wispy and feathered, highlighted with alternating tones of red from ruby to rust. She caught me in her gaze and added, “Don’t you think it’s a shame to chop it all off?”

  “I do love his hair,” I told her, and Blythe grinned at me, his slow, steamy grin that made my knees weak. If I hadn’t been sitting, I would have faltered a little. I smiled back at him, primly, and added, “Can I touch it one more time?”

  I was half-kidding, but Maggie stepped back and spread her hands wide. I crossed the room and joined her behind Blythe’s chair, turning him to face the mirror before I slipped the band from his hair and used both hands to gently comb it loose. He did have gorgeous, thick hair and I wanted to bury my face in it once more. But I didn’t dare with an audience. I looked up to meet his
gaze in the mirror and arranged his hair over his shoulders.

  “Shit, Maggie, you have to cut it before I lose my nerve,” he said then, catching my right palm and kissing it quickly.

  “All right, but for the record, I’m against this,” she insisted, scraping together the hair I’d just loosed and gathering it back into a bundle. She offered me the scissors. “You want to do it?”

  “No,” I said firmly. “I’ll just watch.”

  “Wait, I’ll surprise you,” Blythe said then. “No peeking.”

  I agreed and headed outside to window shop. The day was hot, angling towards scorching, and I was glad I’d chosen a sundress and sandals. There was a breeze, but it kicked up dust and did little to contribute to cooler air. I rummaged in my purse for my sunglasses and then proceeded down the sidewalk. There was a drugstore a few doors down from the salon and I entered under the tingling bell. The floor was checkered in black and white, like an old-time diner, and two teenage girls who reminded me a little of Tish and Camille were working behind a long counter, complete with an ice-cream case. I couldn’t resist and went to check out the flavors; one of the girls said, “We’ve got fresh strawberry today,” and her accent (talk about adorable) and the heat of the day sold me.

  “I’ll take a sugar cone, please,” I told her, and ambled around the store as I ate it; I was admiring a display of baby gifts when a hand slipped over my belly and I squeaked a little, even knowing it was Bly.

  I turned in his arms and drew in a sharp breath.

  “Oh my,” was all I could manage to say.