War changed people. She knew that. Mikey had spent years in the Middle East, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to deduce that he’d seen more than his share of violence during those years. The Mikey she remembered was a little soft around the edges, untried and unformed, with the naïveté of a small-town boy who hadn’t yet experienced the world. This Mikey was all hard edges, and the vibes he gave off, while not exactly hostile, were also not quite inviting. There was something hiding behind his eyes, some darkness, that both drew and repelled her.
When she was seventeen, she’d almost married him.
Now, she couldn’t escape from him quickly enough.
* * *
HER PARENTS LIVED in a modern-day Victorian “painted lady” which, like its owners, emanated warmth and heart. Yellow, trimmed in sage and plum, the house possessed an unparalleled welcoming quality. The paint was tidy, the windows gleamed, and bright, cheerful flower beds lined the flagstone walkway. The entire property was immaculate, in stark contrast to the chaos of her own life. She loved this place, loved it with a depth equaled only by her love for her own little Hollywood Hills bungalow.
Casey and Rob MacKenzie stood shoulder to shoulder in the open doorway. After nearly two decades as a couple, they still adored each other. You could see it in their body language, in the way they touched, a completeness so sweet it made her heart ache. They never changed. Aside from a few strands of silver woven through Casey’s dark hair, they still looked exactly the same as they had when she came to live with them, half a lifetime ago, after her mom died. Then, they’d been strangers. She’d been awful to them, rude and pissy and belligerent. A rotten teenager with a chip on her shoulder the size of Texas. But at some point—and the transformation had been so subtle that she’d never been able to pinpoint when it happened—she’d fallen hopelessly in love with both of them. Casey first, because, well, she was Casey. No more explanation was necessary. It had taken longer with Dad, probably because her mom had spent fifteen years poisoning her against him.
She got out of the car, climbed the steps to the porch, and Casey greeted her with open arms and a welcoming smile. “We’re so glad you’re here,” her stepmother said.
Paige returned the hug. “Me, too.”
Casey released her, and Paige turned to Dad. His jaw was squared in a way that meant he was holding in some strong emotion. He examined her, head to toe, as if looking for physical injuries. “If you want me to kill him,” he muttered, “just say the word. I’ll happily bash in his skull.”
It was the picture his words painted in her head—Dad beating Ry to a pulp with his favorite solid-body electric guitar—that had tears springing to her eyes. She wasn’t sure whether they were tears of sorrow or of mirth. “Jesus, Dad,” she said.
“You’re my little girl. It’s my duty as a father to protect you.”
“Not so little anymore. And Vanessa can have him. As much as I appreciate the offer, he’s sure as hell not worth going to prison over.”
“I hope you won’t begrudge me a few detailed fantasies.”
“Don’t let me stop you. Fantasize away.”
He finally opened his arms, and she took a single step forward and leaned into him. He enveloped her in a bear hug and said, “I’m so sorry, kiddo.”
“That makes two of us.” A tear slipped from the corner of her eye and trickled down her cheek. “I love you, Dad.”
His grip tightened. He cleared his throat and said, “I love you, too.”
MIKEY
HE’D GROWN UP in this house. If he closed his eyes, he could picture it all in minute detail. Every room, every line and angle. Each groove and swirl in the woodwork, the precise pitch of the roof, that spot in the cellar that flooded with every heavy rain. His childhood bedroom, where he and Luke had hidden their stash of Playboy magazines under the mattress and where, on a Tuesday afternoon during spring break of his sophomore year, while his dad was at a teacher’s workshop, he and Elizabeth Gruder had lost their virginity together.
Everything was familiar and yet, the moment he stepped through the front door, it was as though he’d just entered a foreign country, more foreign even than Iraq or Afghanistan. All those familiar details took on an amorphous, otherworldly air, as though he were looking at them through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars.
Little tingles of anxiety danced around his nerve endings. Mikey took a hard breath and then let it out slowly. Rinsed and repeated.
From the kitchen, his dad shouted, “In here!”
He took another breath to ward off the anxiety, then stepped out of his shoes and wound his way through the dining room to the kitchen, where he found his father bent over the open oven door, checking on the pot roast. Squinting, Jesse read the temperature on the meat thermometer, nodded his approval, and closed the door. “A few more minutes,” he said, straightening and studying his son with a critical eye.
Mikey shoved his hands into his pockets and braced his feet precisely six inches apart. He cleared his throat and said, “Where’s Rose?”
“She and Beth ran to the store. She forgot dinner rolls. Where’s Amy? I thought she’d be with you.”
A muscle twitched in his cheek. As principal of the high school, Dad should know. It was his job to know. “Dress rehearsal for the school play. It’s tomorrow night.”
“Oh, right. Of course. So how are things?”
“Things are okay.”
His father’s gaze made him squirm. Sometimes it seemed that Jesse’s X-ray vision could see straight into his son’s brain. “Any news on the job front?” his dad said.
Inside his pockets, Mikey’s fists clenched. Let it go, he told himself. And said, “Not really looking right now, Dad.”
His father’s dark eyes narrowed. “You told me six months ago that this job was just a stopgap. Something to fill in until you figured out what you wanted to do. It’s been almost two years since you left Iraq—”
“I can count.”
There was a barely perceptible change to his father’s face, a hardening that told him they were headed into dangerous territory. Anxiety snaked, like an insidious cobra, around his innards, strangling his breath and cramping his stomach. “You need to be doing something with your life,” Jesse said. “Finish your education. Get a real job. Buy a house. Get married. Start a family. I don’t care which one. Surprise me. Just pick one and commit to it. You’re thirty years old. You need to be doing something besides working as Teddy’s gofer—”
“Dad, stop! I realize that I’m a complete and utter failure, and probably a huge disappointment to you. But pointing out every one of my flaws won’t change anything.”
“I never said you were a failure—”
“You don’t have to. Do you think I don’t know it?”
His father opened his mouth, clearly prepared to retort, but halted at the sound of a car door slamming outside. Fourteen-year-old Beth blew through the door, carrying a paper bag with the IGA logo on the front. His kid sister set the bag on the counter and wrapped her arms around Mikey. Hugging her back, he said, “Hi, Squirt.”
“I’m not a squirt,” she said, green eyes alight with merriment. “You need a shave, big brother. Where’s Amy?”
Why did they all think he couldn’t go anywhere without Amy Tardiff glued to his side? “Play rehearsal,” he said, trying not to let his irritation show. “Tomorrow’s the big night.”
“Oh.” Disappointment colored her voice. Beth loved Amy. They all loved Amy. “I thought she’d be coming with you.”
“Not tonight.”
His stepmother came into the kitchen, carrying a paper bag that matched Beth’s. “Hey,” Rose said to him. “Where’s Amy?”
The thin control he’d maintained over his temper snapped. “Jesus Christ, people,” he said. “We’re not joined at the hip!”
All three of them froze, clearly stunned by his outburst. “People seem to think we’re a matched set,” he said. “Salt-and-pepper. Ham-and-eggs. Mike-and-Amy.
We’re not a single organism, you know. She has her life, and I have mine.”
In the ensuing silence, a bead of sweat trickled down his spine. This was his own fault. They’d been dating for over a year, and Jackson Falls was a small town. Small towns had expectations. Undoubtedly everyone in town—including his entire extended family—thought he was just this side of putting a ring on Amy’s finger. But he wasn’t ready to start picking out china patterns yet. Maybe he’d never be ready.
He liked Amy Tardiff. She was smart, dedicated to her students, a good woman, when she wasn’t being petty and jealous. But the thought of marrying her left a crippling, sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. Maybe Gunther was right, and he wasn’t doing either of them any favors by staying with her when he couldn’t guarantee that like would ever turn into love. Right now, he couldn’t imagine feeling that way about anyone ever again.
But sometimes life surprised you. There were a lot of teaching moments. And if there was one lesson life had taught him, it was to grab the sweet moments in both hands and hold on for all you were worth, instead of wasting precious time on people and places you’d later regret. Because life was brief and unpredictable, and he had enough regrets already.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Maybe I should just leave. I’m not very good company tonight.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Rose said, rubbing his shoulder with an affection he probably didn’t deserve. “Let’s just forget about it. Jesse, is that roast ready?”
His stepmother’s pot roast tasted like heaven to a guy who mostly subsisted on bologna sandwiches and gas station pizza. Conversation was stilted as they all struggled to avoid any topic that might prove controversial. He was halfway through dessert when he remembered.
“Paige MacKenzie’s in town,” he said. “She stopped into the store today.”
His father and stepmother exchanged startled glances. Beth, who’d always idolized her rock star cousin, squealed in delight and said, “Emma didn’t tell me Paige was coming! Can I go visit her?”
Rose cleared her throat and said carefully, “How long will she be here?”
“She didn’t say.” Mikey cut off a piece of pie with his fork and shoveled it into his mouth. Chewed and swallowed. “She seemed…vulnerable…for lack of a better word. That guy she was engaged to is some piece of work.”
“Vulnerable,” Jesse said. “That’s not a word I’d ever associate with Paige.”
Thinking of the way she’d keeled over on the floor directly in front of him, Mikey said, “I think she’s worn down. She probably needs to hide for a while. Her face has been plastered all over every tabloid on the planet for two weeks now. If I could get my hands on that asshole—” He glanced up, saw the expressions on all three faces, and, recognizing his uncharacteristic vehemence, took it down a notch. Mikey cleared his throat and nodded to his sister. “Give her a few days to settle in, and then I bet she’d be thrilled to see you.”
PAIGE
DINNER WAS DONE, and the kids had disappeared upstairs with the gifts she’d brought them. A video game rife with blood and guts for Davey who, at eleven, was a lanky, youthful version of their father. For sweet and giggly thirteen-year-old Emma, she’d brought a pre-release CD of her favorite band. It was just the adults now, sitting around a gas fire in the cozy living room that Casey had decorated with homey little gewgaws, antique lace curtains, and strategically placed candles. There was something about this place that reached deep down inside Paige and snared her, heart and soul, every time she came home. No matter how terrible things might be in the outside world, coming home for even a brief visit somehow seemed to lighten her load.
She leaned back in the recliner, balanced her cup of Earl Grey on the chair arm, and said to nobody in particular, “It’s so good to be back here.”
From her perch on the couch across the room, Casey said, “You can stay for as long as you want. You can stay forever if you want to.”
“There’s a part of me that wishes I could stay forever. But sooner or later, I have to climb back on the rollercoaster and get on with life.”
Above her head, soft music spilled from Dad’s built-in stereo speakers. There was always music in this house, always an eclectic variety. Tonight, it was some jazz tune from the early Sixties, lush with horns and strings and bluesy angst, a fitting backdrop to her own dark-blue mood.
“You know,” she said, “I keep asking myself if there’s something I could have done different. Anything that might have prevented this from happening. I know I was gone a lot, but it’s not like I was out slutting around. I was working, trying to build a solid foundation for our life together. So we could spend more time together later on, once we had a family.”
“Don’t you dare to blame yourself,” her father said curtly. “This is all on him.”
“Dad, it’s not that simple.” She rubbed absently at the nubby fabric of the chair arm. “The last couple of years, I was on the road half the year. You of all people should know what kind of strain that can put on a relationship.”
“You work through it. You don’t bail at the first sign of trouble. Casey and I have managed for fifteen years.”
“You and Casey skew the stats all to hell. The two of you have the strongest relationship of anyone I know. Ryan and I couldn’t begin to compete with you.”
He made a sound somewhere between a grunt and a snort. “Look,” she said, “I knew things were going downhill. I thought that once I got home from tour, we’d do whatever it took to fix it. Looks like Ryan took care of that before I got the chance.”
Her father’s mouth thinned. “I don’t even want to hear that name spoken in my house.”
“Oh, shush,” his wife told him. “Sit down and let her speak.”
He clamped his mouth shut and, still looking thunderous, plunked down hard beside Casey on the couch. “I love what I do for a living,” Paige said. “I absolutely adore it. I also want a family. A husband, kids, the whole white picket fence thing. But the two lifestyles? They don’t really mix. I think it’s harder for a woman to balance work and a home life, especially the kind of work I do. The expectations are so unrealistic in both arenas. We’re expected to be all things to all people. I don’t think that’s possible.” She paused to contemplate. “Sometimes,” she continued, “I think I’m—to use an old-fashioned word—unmarriageable.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Casey said. “Of course you’re not unmarriageable. You just haven’t found the right man yet.”
“I thought I had. I loved him. Hell, I still love him, in spite of the fact that I know he’s a heartless bastard. You don’t just turn love on and off, like a faucet.” The telltale stinging behind her eyes made her silently curse herself for being weak and girly. “If you’re hurt, or disappointed, or even broken, the love doesn’t just go away. How the hell am I supposed to make it go away?”
“Time,” Casey said gently. “It’s the great healer.”
Under his breath, Dad muttered, “A shotgun would do the trick.”
Casey gave him a hard look and said, “You’re not helping.”
“I want to throttle him. What he did to her—” He stopped abruptly and shook his head.
“I understand that, but it’s not your business. This is between Paige and Ryan.”
At the mention of Ry’s name, he winced. “I’m tough, Dad,” Paige told him, “I’ll get through this. But it’ll take me some time. Right now I feel like I’ve been body-slammed without a mat. But I’m resilient, and resourceful. I’m not about to have a breakdown. I may have a few crying spells, but—” She cleared her throat to ease the sensation of choking. “I’m mostly over wanting to cry,” she lied.
Dad still looked thunderous. Casey’s warm green eyes said she saw through the lie, but wouldn’t call her on it. “Can I say something?” Casey asked.
“Go ahead. You know I always value whatever you have to say.”
“Understand that I’m not excusing him. But things happen. Things we
don’t plan. We fall in love. We fall out of love. The world isn’t black and white. There are a million shades of gray.” Casey paused, toyed with her wedding ring, rolled it around on a pale, slender finger. “Maybe that’s the way it was with Ryan. I don’t approve of the way he handled it. He had no excuse to publicly humiliate you. But sometimes, people fall out of love. Or were never really there in the first place.”
She considered Casey’s words. Ry had grown increasingly distant over the past year, but she’d been too caught up in her crazy life to notice. Maybe, if she’d been paying attention, she could have done something before it was too late. Or maybe it wouldn’t have mattered. If Ryan didn’t love her any longer—or worse, had never loved her—trying to fix things would have been no more effective than applying a Band-Aid over an amputation.
It still hurt. It hurt like hell to know that she’d invested three years of her life in this man, and in the end, it had all been for nothing. It was a truth she didn’t know where to put, one that would take time to process.
Right now, she was too tired to care about processing it. She just nodded and closed her eyes.
“You’re practically asleep in your chair,” Casey said. “Why don’t you go up to bed? We can talk later.”
After the last chaotic six months, what she needed most now was to sleep for about a week in a nice, comfy bed. To withdraw from life for a time, while her family closed ranks around her. The mess with Ry would still be here when she came around, but once she’d caught up on her sleep and was feeling human again, she’d be better able to handle it.
Face the Music: Beyond Jackson Falls Book 1 Page 3
