The Next Little Thing: A Jackson Falls Mini

by Laurie Breton

  "Hah. It feels more like a life sentence."

  He understood. He'd hated school, too, until he got to college. He'd spent two years at Boston's Berklee School of Music, soaking up knowledge like a sponge. Theory, composition, transcription. A little piano. A lot of guitar. The whole performance deal. It had been heaven on earth, and he'd tolerated the academic courses that were a necessary evil because the rest of it made up for them. After two years, he'd left Berklee, when he met Danny Fiore and the real world beckoned. They'd started a band together, and neither of them had ever looked back. But those years at Berklee had been the foundation upon which he built his entire musical career. And his daughter, if she managed to survive algebra and her last two years of high school, would probably follow in his footsteps.

  He said goodnight to Paige and followed the sound of his wife's voice to the bedroom. By the light of a single lamp, she was sitting in the comfortable rocking chair he'd bought for just this purpose, nursing the baby and cooing softly to her. Transfixed, he found himself wishing he'd been born an artist instead of a musician, just so he could paint the two of them together.

  "Shut the door," she said.

  He closed it behind him, watched as she expertly propped the baby on her shoulder and elicited a huge belch. "Sit down," she told him. "We need to talk."

  Oh, boy. You can run, MacKenzie, but you can't hide. He'd been a little crazy ever since Emma was born, and now it was coming back to bite him on the ass. Casey wasn't the kind of woman to let anything ride, and her finely-tuned radar never missed a thing. He'd be lucky to escape with his hide intact.

  He made his way to the window seat, perched casually on the cushion, watched as she put the baby to bed in the cradle that would remain in their room for the first few months of their daughter's life. And then she sat down next to him and said, "Have your feelings for me changed?"

  It was the last thing he'd expected to hear. "What the hell are you talking about?"

  She folded her hands in her lap, neatly, the way she did everything. Drew in a deep breath. "You haven't been yourself since Emma was born. Since the night you came to me in the hospital. All I need is a yes or no. Even if it hurts me, the truth can't be any worse than my wild imaginings. Have you fallen out of love with me?"

  They were the most ridiculous words she'd ever spoken, so far beyond ridiculous that he couldn't comprehend them. Had childbirth stolen her brain? Was this the result of that crazy mix of hormones his dad had mentioned?

  Her eyes narrowed. "Why are you laughing at me, MacKenzie?"

  "I’m not laughing."

  "Then wipe that smirk off your face and answer the damn question."

  He tried to accommodate, tried to choke it back. But after the tension of the past few days, it simply bubbled out of him, a full-bellied, full-bodied peal of laughter.

  "This is funny?" she said.

  "Oh, shit." His stomach hurt, and he wrapped his arms around it. "You can't seriously believe that I don't love you, Fiore."

  "I didn't ask if you loved me. I asked if you were still in love with me. Big difference, MacKenzie."

  She was serious. Dead, flat-out serious. He swiped at a tear and did his best to compose himself. "Ah, baby," he said, "I'm sorry. I don't mean to laugh at you. But I've never heard anything more stupid come from your mouth. For the record, I plan to be in love with you until the day I die."

  "You’re digging that hole deeper with every word."

  What was wrong with the woman? She should have been relieved, shouldn't she? "It's not you," he said.

  "If it's not me, then it must be Emma." Her lips drew together in a thin line, and her shoulders sagged. "Are you sorry we had her? Is that it? Because if it is, you might've expressed those second thoughts about nine months sooner. It's a little late for them now."

  "No! No, no, no. I am over the moon about the baby. Are you kidding? If you ever tried to take her away from me, I'd fight you, all the way to the Supreme Court if I had to. How could you even think such a thing?"

  "What the hell was I supposed to think, Rob? Nothing's felt right since she was born, and it's all on your plate. I've imagined all kinds of terrible things, because you're not talking to me."

  "I talk to you."

  "Not about anything that matters! Damn it, MacKenzie, this isn't how our marriage operates. We don't hide things from each other. We talk. We communicate. I spent thirteen years married to a man who kept everything inside, and I won't tolerate it from you. We're different. Our relationship is special! You made me fall so deeply in love with you that there's no hope of ever climbing out. We made a baby together, for the love of God. And then you had to go and act like a goddamn man, and spoil it all!"

  "I am a goddamn man!"

  "Talk to me!"

  "Fine! It's not you, it's not the baby, it's me. ME! Your pathetic, inadequate, scared shitless excuse for a husband!"

  Her mouth opened. Stayed that way for a moment. Then clamped shut. Quietly, she said, "What are you talking about?"

  Suddenly, it was all too much for him. He braced his elbows on his knees, ran his palms up and down his face. In resignation, he said, "I'm going to get it all wrong and screw her up completely."

  "And that's what's wrong? That's what this is all about?"

  Fingers buried in his hair, he said, "I'm scared, babe. I'm a loser, a flake, an unstructured, rambling mess. That's not what a father's supposed to be. A father's supposed to be strong, and sure, and untouchable. Like my dad. And yours. Not some freaky-deaky aging hippie with too many guitars and too few responsibilities. I'm not good enough for her. I can't give her what she needs. And I've spent half my time these past couple of days wanting to pack a bag and run away."

  He waited for the explosion. Waited for her to tell him he was right, that there was no way he could ever be a satisfactory father to that precious little girl they'd created, that he should just go ahead and pack that bag and hit the road, Jack.

  Softly, she said, "When were you planning to tell me this?"

  He glanced up, saw her face, softened by lamplight, love and compassion shining in her eyes. "I'm telling you now."

  "What took you so long?"

  "I was ashamed. And I didn't want to hurt you. Didn't want you think I had any regrets about Emma."

  She sighed. Shook her head and said, "You're an idiot, but you're my idiot, and I love you."

  "I know I need to change. But I don't think I can do it. And it scares the hell out of me. I went to see Danny yesterday. I thought he could give me some advice."

  She raised both eyebrows. "You went looking to Danny for advice?"

  "Yeah. Crazy, I know. But he was such a great dad. I thought I could get a few pointers from him. And maybe I just needed to talk to somebody who'd listen without talking back."

  She took his hand in hers, kissed the hard, callused tips of his fingers. Said, "My crazy-ass guitar man. Don't you realize that Emma and I love you just the way you are?"

  "I’m supposed to be the captain of this ship. But with me in charge, it'll sink faster than the Titanic after it hit that berg. Hell. I'm the goddamn iceberg."

  "Oh, Flash. Do you really think I'd let that happen?"

  He let out a soft snort. "I shouldn't have to depend on you."

  "That's what I'm here for. We depend on each other. It's called marriage."

  "She's so tiny. So helpless. What if I screw up? What if you're not here, and she's crying, and I'm too wrapped in my music to even hear her? What if she falls off her bike and I'm not there to pick her up? What happens the first time some boy breaks her heart, and I don't know the right words to say to comfort her?"

  "Come on, Rob. You've been wonderful with Paige."

  "But Paige is sixteen years old. I wasn't there for those crucial growing-up years. She came to me already fully-formed. It's different with Emma. I'm the one molding the clay. What if I mold it wrong, and deform her horribly?"

  "Oh, babe. You can't let fear rule your life. You can't
spend all your time being afraid of things that will probably never happen. I have absolute faith in you, MacKenzie. Not blind faith, like I had with Danny, because that was foolish and naïve, and I'm not like that any more. I grew up, and I stepped into your arms with my eyes wide open. It was the best decision I ever made. Of course you have flaws. We all do. That’s what makes us human. Of course you'll make mistakes. So will I. It's how we learn. But there's nobody I’d rather raise children with. Inside that loosey-goosey, wonderfully flaky guy is a rock-solid man who's always had the wisdom to solve any problem I couldn't see my way out of. You just have to learn to believe in yourself. Do it for me. Do it for Paige and Emma. Do it for yourself."

  He took a hard breath as some of the worry that had weighed him down slithered off his shoulders. "I wrote a song," he said. "For Emma. The night I came to the hospital. I'll play it for you later."

  Her smile was radiant. "Come," she said, taking his hand and leading him to the cradle where Emma slept. Together, they stood watching their sleeping baby. "Look at what we did." She lay her head against his arm. "We made this gorgeous creature. You and me, Flash. Isn't that just the most amazing thing you've ever seen?"

  He studied Emma, her soft, flawless skin, her tiny chest moving up and down with each breath. Swallowed hard. “It is.”

  "This is just the beginning. A new baby, a new house, a new us. Are you ready? Are you going to be okay?"

  He probed his feelings, much the way he would have probed an aching tooth. And was surprised by what he discovered. "Yeah," he said. "I think I am."

  "That's the answer I was looking for." She wound her arm around his and said, "I hear there's this big, honking Jacuzzi in the next room, just waiting to be christened. Want to take a long, lovely soak with the woman of your dreams?"

  He lifted her chin and kissed her. Smiled into her beautiful green eyes, those eyes that had stolen his heart the first time he looked into them. And said, “Babydoll, there will never come a time when I won't want to take a long, lovely soak with you."

  THE END

  SNEAK PREVIEW OF JACKSON FALLS BOOK 4

  REDEMPTION ROAD

  COMING IN LATE 2013!

  January, 1993

  Jackson Falls, Maine

  She hadn't been sure the fourteen-year-old Vega would make it this far. She'd bought it for a measly two hundred bucks the day that Irv's kids ran her on a rail out of Palm Beach. They'd sat her down one afternoon, announced that they were contesting the will, and given her fifteen minutes to pack up what was hers before the locksmith waiting in his panel truck in the circular drive outside the mansion changed the lock on the front door.

  It wasn't what Irv would have wanted, but she was too weary, too discouraged, to fight it. They'd eventually win, anyway. She and Irv had only been married for a year. In the eyes of his kids, that was hardly long enough to justify her stealing their inheritance, and she was certain that the right attorney could easily sway the judge to their way of thinking. It didn't matter to his kids that she'd actually cared for their father, despite the twenty-five-year age difference. In their eyes, she was a gold-digger, and that was all that mattered.

  So she'd left with nothing more than two suitcases of designer clothing, a few pieces of jewelry, and seventy-five bucks in her Chanel handbag. She'd sold the bag and most of the jewelry to a small secondhand shop for a price so low it was insulting, but it was enough to cover the cost of the car and the trip to Maine.

  She'd thought about stopping in Boston. Trav lived there, on a dead-end street in Chestnut Hill, and he would have let her sleep on the couch in his finished basement. But she and her older brother's wife had never seen eye to eye, and what was the point of stirring up trouble between them? So she'd given Boston a wide berth, circling around it on 495, praying she and her little Vega, which pretty much topped out at 61 mph, would survive all those crazy Boston drivers swerving around her doing ninety.

  And here she was, back in this shithole town, the one place she'd sworn she'd never return to. But she was out of money and excuses, and home was the one place where, when you had to go there, they had to take you in. On this fifty-degree January afternoon, driving through downtown in a fourteen-year-old Chevy with a mud-splattered windshield because she'd run out of washer fluid two hundred miles back, she could smell the faint sulphur odor from the paper mill downriver. There was no denying the fact that she was one hell of a long way from the moneyed fragrance of Palm Beach.

  The Vega was running on fumes, and she was down to her last twenty-dollar-bill. Colleen downshifted and wheeled into the Big Apple convenience store, where she pumped five bucks worth of fuel into her gas tank and cleaned her windshield with a fistful of snow. She'd gone to high school with the guy working the cash register. Sonny Somebody-or-other. She kept her sunglasses on and her eyes lowered as they completed their transaction, hoping he wouldn't recognize her and want to chat. Small talk had never been her strongest suit, and what was there to talk about anyway?

  Him: What have you been up to since the last time I saw you?

  Her: Oh, nothing much, except that I just buried my sixty-year-old third husband.

  Meadowbrook Road was a quagmire. It always was at this time of year. The town maintained the unpaved road, or so they claimed, but between January thaw and mid-April, it mostly consisted of deep, muddy ruts and frost heaves. Easily navigable in a four-wheel-drive vehicle. Not so much in a Chevy Vega with summer tires that had spent its entire pathetic life in southern Florida and was skittish as a newborn colt on these snowy Maine roads.

  John Anderson was singing Straight Tequila Night on the dashboard radio when she passed the old Abercrombie place, perched atop a small hill. She'd heard, through the grapevine, that her sister had lived in the Gothic Revival farmhouse for a time before selling it to their nephew Billy when Casey and her second husband had built a new home on Ridge Road. Although he'd been a huge part of Casey's life for nearly two decades, Colleen had never met her sister's new husband, and she was mildly curious. The late, great Danny Fiore would be a hard act to follow. The irony of it struck her: She'd always been jealous of her older sister, had always coveted whatever Casey had that she didn't. It was really true that you had to be careful what you wished for. She and Casey had never had much in common. She'd certainly never expected that when they finally did share something, it would be the mantle of widowhood.

  She took McKellar's Hill at a snail's pace, let out a sigh of relief when she reached the bottom and saw the river ahead of her, its frozen surface dark in spots, slushy from the thaw. Another quarter-mile, and then, on her right, a broad expanse of snowy fields with broken, yellowed corn stalks poking up here and there through the pitted snow. Beyond that, wooden fence posts marked the pasture where Dad's Holsteins grazed. In the distance loomed the weathered nineteenth-century barn where hay was stored, flanked by the low-roofed addition, circa 1952, that housed the milking parlor and the cattle stalls. Two blue Harvestore silos stood sentinel, and as she drew closer, the old farmhouse hove into view, smoke rising from its chimney, its clapboards in need of a fresh coat of paint.

  She passed the mailbox, clicked her blinker, and turned in at the sign that read MEADOWBROOK FARM ~ REGISTERED HOLSTEINS. A cluster of chickens scattered as she came to a stop beside the ominously tilted utility pole at the center of the yard, directly behind the red Farmall tractor her father had owned since the beginning of time. For a moment, she just sat there gazing across a muddy, slushy barnyard, the steering wheel vibrating beneath her hands and dread filling every crevice of her heart. Dad didn't know she was coming. She hadn't been able to muster the courage to call for fear that he'd hang up on her. Or worse, tell her not to bother. She hadn't been the favored child to begin with; she could only imagine how far she'd fallen from grace since the day she walked out on Jesse and her nine-year-old son.

  But if there was one thing she'd learned in the past decade, it was that running only got you so far. Sooner or later, everybody had to fa
ce the music. So she shut off her ignition. The Vega sputtered and died. She opened her door, swung around, and planted her Ferragamos flat on the muddy ground.

  And for the first time in six years, Colleen Bradley Lindstrom Davis Berkowitz stood on Maine soil. She took a hard, deep breath, one that drew in the scent of mud season overlaid with the sharp tang of wood smoke and the faint aroma of cow manure. And then she shut the door and marched resolutely toward the house.

  The black sheep of the Bradley clan had returned to the fold.

  Author Bio

  Laurie Breton started making up stories in her head when she was a small child. At the age of eight, she picked up a pen and began writing them down. Although she now uses a computer to write, she's still addicted to a new pen and a fresh sheet of lined paper. At some point during her angsty teenage years, her incoherent scribblings morphed into love stories, and that's what she's been writing, in one form or another, ever since.

  When she's not writing, she can usually be found driving the back roads of Maine, looking for inspiration. Or perhaps standing on a beach at dawn, shooting a sunrise with her Canon camera. If all else fails, a day trip to Boston, where her heart resides, will usually get the juices flowing.

  The mother of two grown children, Breton has two beautiful grandkids and two precious granddogs. She and her husband live in a small Maine town with a lovebird who won't stop laying eggs and a Chihuahua/Papillon/Schipperke/Pug mix named River who pretty much runs the household.

  I love to hear from readers! If you enjoyed this book, please drop me a line.

  lauriebreton@gmail.com

  www.lauriebreton.com

  www.facebook.com/LaurieBretonBooks