The Scars I Bare

by J. L. Berg

  “I actually brought some of my Star Wars comics. My mom saved them; can you believe that?”

  “Yes, I can. If she’s anything like mine, she’s saved just about everything, short of the thumbtacks you used. Make sure you show those to my dad. That might help win him over.”

  “You mean, it might help lessen the shock that the man he thinks you’ve been happily married to for the last seven years is a—” my eyes found Lizzie’s in the rear-view mirror and I caught myself from saying anything more.

  “Yeah, right—that.” She paused for a moment. It was one of those heavy pauses, and I knew she was debating on what to say next.

  “Hey, do you happen to watch Doctor Who? Go to Comic-Con? Or maybe you’re a closet Potterhead?”

  Of all the things she could have said, I didn’t expect that.

  I couldn’t help the smirk that spread across my face. “I literally have no idea what you just said.”

  She laughed and patted me on the leg. “Well, we will just have to work with what we have then.”

  “And what would that be?” I asked.

  “Your charming good looks and the fact that you adore me.”

  Lizzie giggled in the background as I looked deep into Cora’s eyes, realizing they’d done a pretty good job of distracting me. Because any Star Wars geek knew the order in which to watch the movies.

  Well played, evil genius. Well played.

  “Yes, I do,” I answered, forgetting all about the sea and the dark grasp it had on my heart as they both continued to divert my attention for the next full hour until we were back on solid ground.

  “Wake up.” Cora’s panicked voice rang through the darkness, causing me to bolt upright. “We’re late!”

  I shook my head, taking a quick look around as I tried to make sense of my surroundings. A light flipped on as Cora ripped a very sleepy Lizzie from the bed next to me.

  Double beds, a cheesy beach motif. Hotel. We were in a hotel.

  It was all starting to come back to me.

  I looked down at the clock on the nightstand that separated me from the girls.

  “Shit!” I cursed, causing a still very sleepy Lizzie to giggle from the bathroom.

  “Dean said a bad word.”

  Jumping out of bed, I threw on the clothes I’d pulled out of my suitcase the night before and did my best attempt at a hasty dressing.

  Cora came out of the bathroom just as I finished buttoning my jeans, a toothbrush in her mouth as she threw clothes at Lizzie, who was beginning to understand the situation. Mommy was not messing around.

  “It’s only half an hour, right?” she mumbled while she brushed. “We can make it up on the road.”

  “Yep,” I assured her, struggling to pull my shirt over my head, but it wouldn’t budge.

  She ran into the bathroom and returned a moment later to help me.

  “I’m fine. Really. I am just not usually this rushed,” I snapped.

  She averted her gaze, turning her attention to Lizzie.

  I let out a giant breath as I finished getting dressed. Walking toward her, I placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” I said. “My frustration wasn’t aimed toward you.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked, her attention still focused on getting Lizzie dressed. “Because this is me, Dean. Late and unorganized. I mess up first days of school and have random outbursts about bad driving. I sleep in when I’m not supposed to, and I don’t take directions well,” she confessed. “And I need…” She let out a deep breath as she finished Lizzie’s hair. She knelt down and whispered for her to go pack up her things. Turning to me with those deep brown eyes, she said, “I need someone who is going to love me. All of me. The good, the bad, and everything in between. I’ve already had one man try to change me into something I wasn’t, and it cost me nearly everything.”

  “Well, let’s make a deal,” I suggested, looking at the clock before adding, “a quick one because we’ve really got to go. How about we agree to accept each other at face value, right here, in this shitty hotel room? I’ll always let you be you—the sometimes unorganized but always involved mother with the heart of gold—and you let me be the smart, sexy ex-fisherman who loves you.”

  Her eyes widened, glistening with emotion. “Deal,” she said, her voice heavy and hoarse.

  I didn’t know how long we stood there, staring at one another. Too long probably, but neither of us wanted to break the spell I’d cast with my words.

  “Um, Mommy? Plane?” Lizzie said.

  We both blinked. A wide smile spread across my face as we each turned to see her standing by the door with her luggage neat and tidy at her side.

  “Right,” Cora said, “plane.”

  She turned to me, her face full of happiness and joy, and I couldn’t help myself.

  “One more second, Lizzie,” I said, pulling her mom toward me.

  Our noses bumped together, and she laughed as our eyes met once more. This time, I didn’t need to say it.

  She knew.

  Bending down, I kissed her.

  And I heard fireworks.

  And the cheers of one happy little girl.

  Dear World,

  It’s me again, Cora.

  My patient left today. You know the one I was telling you about? It’s something I should have been ready for. After all, that’s what I do, right?

  I take care of sick people, and eventually, they move on—in one way or another.

  Some hurt more than others.

  Last month, I was taking care of an elderly woman with cancer. She had come in with an infection, and one shift, she was doing well, but the next, she was gone.

  I never got to say good-bye.

  I got to say good-bye to Dean. That’s his name, remember?

  He asked me out.

  I probably shouldn’t write that.

  But he asked me out with such hope in his eyes.

  My wedding ring hung from the chain around my neck like a heavy weight around my heart.

  That great big bear of a man with the sad eyes and the gentle soul.

  God, how I wish I could have said yes.

  How I wish I could have explained to him everything that was going on in my life.

  The canceled plans with my parents.

  The angered husband.

  The bruised cheek and the pound of makeup it had taken to cover it up.

  But I couldn’t.

  I can’t.

  I can’t tell anyone.

  Especially not any of you, which is why this will never be posted.

  Ever.

  Thankfully, by some act of God, we made it to our flight on time. The fact that it was thirty minutes delayed probably had something to do with it. That, and we’d made it from Nags Head to Norfolk Airport in record time.

  With our early morning flight, staying in a closer hotel would have been ideal, but the idea of staying anywhere near Virginia Beach, which bordered Norfolk, was out of the question.

  I knew it was silly. It wasn’t like I’d married into the mob, and Blake had men combing the city for me. But I wouldn’t start the trip out by stepping into my past, especially since I was currently avoiding his texts. All ten of them.

  Thankfully, Dean understood, and I thought he sort of agreed, too, considering his nostrils did this sort of flaring thing whenever I mentioned Blake’s name.

  So, we’d stayed in North Carolina and made the short drive into Virginia in the wee hours of the morning, avoiding most of the traffic and sliding into our seats on the aircraft at the last possible moment.

  “Are these TVs?” Lizzie asked the moment we got on board.

  “Yep,” Dean said, puffing his chest like he was some sort of plane aficionado when I knew for a fact that he’d only flown a grand total of three times—one being the emergency trip to the hospital after the ferryboat explosion.

  “Maybe we can find you something interesting to watch. I’m sure they have a documentary or maybe the history—” Dean
suggested.

  “I want to watch My Little Pony!” she announced, already flipping through the channels like a pro.

  He looked over at me, his face taking on this blank kind of expression.

  “Still a kid”—I shrugged—“remember?”

  “Gotcha. Ponies for the win.”

  The rest of the plane ride was fairly uneventful and short. Dean and I spent some time reading quietly until he nudged me, something obviously bothering him.

  “What the hell is a Potterhead?” he asked.

  I laughed, wondering how long this particular term had been bothering him. Good thing I hadn’t sprung any more on him. If there was a fandom, ranging from Marvel to Star Trek to The Lord of the Rings, someone in my family was obsessed with it.

  I pulled up the first book on my phone, the one I’d read over and over. If it were a physical copy, it’d have tattered pages and a worn cover. I actually had one of those, but it was Lizzie’s now.

  “Oh,” he said. “You mean, Harry Potter. Why didn’t you just say that? I’ve seen the movies,” he said very matter-of-factly.

  I just sat there, dumbfounded.

  “I’m glad you brought this up before we landed; otherwise, there might have been bloodshed in the house of Carpenter. There is a difference between seeing the movies and being a Potterhead.”

  His eyebrows rose in confusion. “Okay, I’m lost again.”

  And he would be until I properly showed him the ways of my people.

  The minute we were off the plane, I dragged him into one of those magazine stores in the airport and bought him the first book in the series, handing it over to him like the precious treasure it was.

  “Read it,” I pressed. “You’ll thank me.”

  His eyebrows rose once again as he looked down at me. “This is that other side of you, isn’t it? The one I’m gonna have to love, no matter what?”

  I smirked as we headed toward baggage claim. “Yep. Wishing you’d stayed back home?”

  He squeezed my hand as he looked down at the new reading material I’d just bought him. “Oh no,” he said, giving Lizzie a wink. “I’m all in.”

  “You’ll like it,” Lizzie said.

  “You’ve read it?”

  She nodded. “Last year.”

  He just shook his head like he should have known.

  We made it down to baggage claim, stopping only one more time for a potty break for Lizzie. By the time we made it to the carousel, our few bags were the only ones left making the rotation. Dean jogged forward and pulled them off one at a time.

  “I’m not even going to feel bad that I enjoyed every minute of that. Were you always this muscly?” I said after blatantly checking him out. I’d adjusted my voice to what I liked to call my Lizzie-proof voice. It was the volume I used when talking about things less than appropriate.

  So, that was about fifty percent of what I’d been saying to Dean lately.

  “A little more so than before,” Dean answered with a wicked grin.

  I leaned in closer, doing my best attempt at flirting. “And no one snatched you up?”

  “Well, I mean, they tried, but I was waiting for the perfect woman.”

  I blushed, something I’d been doing a lot.

  Grabbing my hand as we turned toward the door, he suddenly stopped. “So, are your parents meeting us here or outside? What’s the deal? Are we taking a taxi, and they’re just waiting for us at their house?”

  Oh boy, here goes nothing.

  My lips pressed together as my face turned red for an entirely different reason. I looked up, as if searching for divine intervention. “I didn’t tell them we were coming,” I said quickly, the words rushing out of my mouth so fast, I didn’t think he’d processed them for several seconds afterward.

  “What?”

  I grimaced with the nervous, sick feeling I got whenever something started to go south in our relationship.

  Would he get mad?

  What happened when he did?

  Oh God, what was I doing?

  “Hey,” he said, touching my shoulder, “you okay?”

  I swallowed hard as our eyes met. “Yeah, I’m sorry. I just—how do you explain, you know? I didn’t know how to tell them”—I waved my hands around, encompassing him and me—“this. And I was scared, if I did—”

  “You’d chicken out,” he said, finishing my sentence.

  I just nodded, feeling like the coward I was.

  “It’s okay,” he said, taking my hand as he offered the elbow of his prosthesis to Lizzie.

  She laughed, gladly wrapping her tiny arm around it.

  “Everyone loves a surprise, right?”

  Tears stung my eyes as he escorted us out of the Austin–Bergstrom Airport.

  “And, besides, no one gets mad at the guy with the fake arm,” he said, giving me a wink. “It’s going to be great. Promise.”

  I swallowed the lump in my throat as the familiar Austin heat hit me. I breathed it in, the dry, warm air and the subtle smell of oil in the breeze.

  I was home at last.

  I knew every street corner and turn like the back of my hand. But none of that mattered. I doubted I could have driven that day if my life depended on it. Thank God for Dean and GPS.

  I sat back in the passenger seat, watching my childhood pass by me in that car window. The gas station where I’d scraped my knee, running away from Brenda Parker, the fourth grade bully. The ice cream parlor where I’d had my eighth birthday party. The Italian restaurant where my prom date, Larson, had taken me before the big dance.

  A lot had changed. Houses had popped up where there had been nothing but wide, open spaces. Businesses had closed, and new ones had opened up in their places. But a lot had stayed the same, too, and I could see that little girl I remembered, her pigtails intact as she raced down the streets, trying to outrun stupid Brenda and her gang of misfits.

  God, I’d hated that girl.

  “You okay?” Dean asked, probably noticing I hadn’t spoken since we left the airport.

  “Yeah.” I smiled weakly. “Just a lot of memories. And I’m nervous.”

  My breathing became weak as we drove away a short distance from town. Although I claimed Austin as my hometown when asked by mostly anyone, it wasn’t entirely accurate. In truth, my family hailed from a small bedroom community about thirty minutes outside of Austin called Elgin. While my parents, both professors at the University of Texas, loved the eclectic oddness of Austin, at heart, they were small-town people. They had always wanted that for my brother and me, growing up. A place we could feel safe and secure.

  “Do your parents live in the country?”

  “Well, kind of,” I said. “They like to think they do. But I mean, it’s all kinds of country once you get out of Austin. They live on a small acreage, just a few but enough for them to grow vegetables and even have a few animals. They like to pretend they’re farmers. Well, farmers with a handful of chickens and a goat named C-3PO.”

  He grinned as we made one of the last turns. “So, how do you want to do this?” Dean asked.

  I looked up, seeing the familiar, long driveway my parents had lovingly lined with live oak trees when I was a child. They’d grown since the last time I was here.

  Everything had.

  “Do you want to go in alone and then have us follow after? Or maybe just you and Lizzie for a bit?” Dean was rambling as we pulled up to the house.

  A single tear fell down my cheek.

  I looked up at it.

  The old farmhouse had gotten a coat of fresh white paint, the wraparound porch gleaming in the afternoon sun. Mom’s decorating obsession hadn’t gone anywhere, her autumn wreath firmly in place on the front door as well as several hay bales on either side with an assortment of pumpkins.

  “My father would always make fun of her for those decorations.” I found myself smiling. “The minute September 1 rolled around, she would cover the whole house in pumpkins and leaves.”

  “Looks like
she’s still doing it,” Dean said.

  My gaze followed his. There, at the far end of the porch, was my mother, fussing over a basket of mums. She must have felt my eyes on her because, in that moment, she looked up and froze.

  I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t know what to do or what to say. All I knew was I needed to see her. I needed my Mom. To hold her and tell her a million times over how sorry I was.

  Without thinking, I leaped from the car, running for the woman who’d loved me without reason, cared for me without end, and been my greatest inspiration growing up. Tears were staining my cheeks, pouring down my face, as we closed the gap.

  “Cora!” she cried as her arms wrapped tightly around me at first. Then, like she still didn’t believe I was there, standing in front of her, she patted me down—my hair, the curve of my shoulders, and finally my face. “You’re here,” she said, her voice thick with emotions. “You’re finally here.”

  “Yeah, Mom.” I smiled. “Sorry it took so long.”

  While she was still cupping my cheeks, like she used to do when I was little, I saw her gaze flicker to someone over my shoulder.

  Or someones rather.

  “Lizzie,” she whispered. “She’s so big.”

  There was a mixture of wonder and sadness in her voice. I couldn’t help but feel responsible for the sadness.

  I should have come sooner.

  I should have been braver.

  “There’s a lot I need to tell you,” I said, looking up at the old farmhouse where I’d grown up. “Is Dad around?”

  She smiled, taking my hand, as I motioned for Lizzie and Dean. “Yes, he’s preparing his lectures for the week, but I’m pretty sure he’d be willing to take a break.” She gave me a warm smile and a wink. “Why don’t we go find him?”

  My heart picked up again as Lizzie ran up to us, taking my other free hand, while Dean walked behind us. I knew my mother was curious about the man who was definitely not my husband, but she didn’t ask any questions.

  Instead, she looked down at her granddaughter, who was being unusually shy today, and asked, “Do you like chickens?”

  We stepped up onto the porch and toward the front door, and I could already see the wheels turning in Lizzie’s head.