He chucked the pencil across the room. Growling, he crumpled the page. “Stupid, useless piece of—” He reared back to pitch the wad, but a discovery halted him.
Company.
At the entry of the kitchen, Jo Allister leaned against the doorjamb. Her oversized peacoat hung open around her overalls. “Don’t let me interrupt,” she said. A baseball cap shaded her face, though not her bemusement.
“Don’t you ever knock?”
Her mood instantly clouded. “I’m looking for Maddie. If that’s acceptable to you.”
This made for the second time this week he’d misdirected a vent on his sister’s friend. He surrendered the balled paper onto the table, tried his best for a nicer tone. “She’s not here.”
Jo upturned her palm as if to say, You wanna elaborate?
“She ... went to see our dad.” Based on periodic reports from the nurses, any visits were pointless. Maddie just hadn’t accepted that yet. “Afraid I don’t know when she’ll be back.”
“Fine. Then tell her I swung by.” With a scathing smile, Jo added, “I’d stay and wait, but you might take up throwing knives next.”
Once again, he watched her ponytail shake with fuming steps away from him. She certainly had a knack for jumping straight into his line of fire.
“Hold on,” he called out weakly. Her shoulder flinched, indicating she’d heard him, but she didn’t stop.
He marched after her. “It wasn’t you, okay?”
Ignoring him, she opened the front door. He caught hold of her sleeve.
“Jo, please.”
She didn’t face him, but her feet held.
“I just got a lot on my plate, with baseball and finals and ... everything.”
Gradually she wheeled around. Her bronze eyes gave him a once-over. “That supposed to be an apology?”
TJ found himself without a response. He had lost the skill of presenting a proper sorry. It was tangled up in the net of regrets that a million apologies couldn’t change.
“You’re welcome to stay”—he gestured behind him—“if you wanna wait for Maddie.” Padding the peace offering, he told her, “No knife throwing, I swear.”
A reluctant smile lifted a corner of her mouth. She glanced past him and into the house, considering. “I dunno.”
Man, was she going to make him crawl over hot coals for her forgiveness?
“Looks like we’ve both been cooped up too much,” she said. “Come on.” She waved a hand to usher him down the steps.
He had to admit, it was a nice night. From the smells of leaves burning and cookies baking next door, he sensed his stress dissolving, making her offer tempting. Still, he felt the tug of obligation, recalled the equations that weren’t going to solve themselves.
“Stop your fretting,” Jo said. “Your books aren’t gonna run off. Or your pencil—wherever it landed.”
He gave in to a smile. “All right, all right. Let me grab a jacket.”
TJ glued his gaze to the asphalt to avoid the lineup of houses they passed. It wasn’t the string of gingerbread cutouts that made him want to scream, but the normalcy.
Middle class to upper class, nearly every ethnicity peppered the neighborhood—Russians, Mexicans, Jews, you name it. The families’ after-supper scenes, however, varied little. Fathers smoked their pipes, slippered feet crossed at the ankles, reading newspapers or books, or playing chess with a son eager to turn the tide. Mothers in aprons tended to children all bundled in nightclothes; they double-checked homework or darned socks beside the radio; they nodded to the beat of a youngster plunking away at a piano. Some even had the gall to hang Christmas decorations—December had scarcely arrived!
TJ was so intent on blocking out these lousy Norman Rockwell sketches, he didn’t give any thought to destination until Jo spoke up.
“This is it.” She jerked her thumb toward the sandlot.
“This is what?”
She rolled her eyes, making him wish he’d just played along. “You know, TJ, you’re about as good at apologizing as you are at listenin’.” She continued into the ballpark, collecting rocks from the lumpy dirt.
TJ slogged behind. By the light of the moon, he took inventory of the place he hadn’t visited in at least a decade. The park was even more run-down than he remembered, and smaller. A lot smaller. When the new ball field had opened several blocks away, complete with kelly-green grass and shiny cages and splinter-less benches, kids had immediately shunned the old hangout. It was a toy they’d outgrown and dumped in a dusty attic.
Only now did TJ detect a sadness etched like wrinkles in the sandlot’s shadows.
“Right over there.” Jo pointed out a set of sagging bleachers. “That’s where I carved my initials, front row on the left. My own VIP seat. Every weekend Pop and I would come here and watch my brothers play. I tell ya, we missed a heap of Sunday Masses, but never a Saturday game.” She jiggled the rocks in her hand as if seasoned at throwing dice. Even TJ would think twice before going up against her in back-alley craps. “One day the coach got so tired of me nagging about wanting to hit, he put me in. Thought it would shut me up.”
“Well, obviously that didn’t work.”
Without warning, she flung a pebble that TJ barely dodged.
“And that, buster, was with my left arm.”
TJ shook his head. A quiet laugh shot from his mouth as he dared to follow her.
On the sorry excuse of a mound, level as the Sierra Madres, Jo planted her loafer-clad feet. A pitcher’s stance. She transferred the rocks, save for one, into her coat pocket. With her right hand, she drew back and slung the stone at her target, the lid of a soup can dangling from the batter’s cage. Plunk. The tin rattled against the warped and rusted fence.
Not bad. For a girl.
“So, how’d you make out?” he asked. “Up at bat?”
“Walked,” she said with disdain. “A beanball to the leg.” She flipped her cap backward with a sharp tug and set her shoulders. Sent out another nugget. Plunk. “My brother Otis was pitching. Told his buddies he wanted to teach me a lesson, which was baloney. He was terrified of his little sister scoring a home run off him.” She wound up and threw at the lid again, as hard as her expression. Another bull’s-eye. Three for three. Without daylight.
TJ tried to look unimpressed. “How long ago all this happen?”
“I dunno. Eight, maybe nine years back.”
A smirk stretched his lips. “And ... you’re still holding a grudge?”
She pondered this briefly, rubbing a fourth stone with her thumb. “Irish blood,” she concluded. “Forgiving wasn’t exactly passed down by our ancestors.”
TJ, too, had a dash of Irish mixed into his hodgepodge of European descent. Perhaps this explained his shallow well of forgiveness. He dreaded to think what other traits he’d inherited from his father.
Averting the thought, he focused on the road that had delivered them there. “I gotta get back.”
“No,” Jo said.
He turned to her. “No?”
“Not till I show you why I brought you here.” She tossed her rock aside and sat on the mound. Then she slapped the dirt beside her twice, peering at him expectantly.
He scrunched his face. “Um, yeah. As nice as it would be to hang out and tell ghost stories, I do need to get some studying done.” His future at the university sadly depended on it.
“Two minutes and we’ll go.”
“Jo, I really need—”
“Would you stop your moanin’ and take a load off?”
Clearly arguing would get him nowhere. And he couldn’t very well leave a girl, no matter how self-reliant, alone at night in a deserted park. Safety aside, it was just plain rude.
“All right,” he muttered, “but make it quick.” He took a seat on the packed slope.
“That wasn’t so hard now, was it? Now, lie back.”
“What?”
She groaned at him. “Just do it.”
Concerned by her intentions, he
didn’t move. The two of them had never really hit it off, but if any other girl had invited him to cozy up like this, he’d know where it was leading.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” she spat as if reading his thoughts. Then she lay back, head on her hands, convincing him to recline.
The coolness of the ground soaked through his clothing, sparking a shudder. “Now what?”
“Relax.” She took a leisurely breath. “And look up.”
He cushioned his neck with his fist and dragged his gaze toward the sky. The lens of his vision adjusted, intensifying the spray of white specks. Clear as salt crystals on an endless black table. Were the stars tonight brighter than usual? Or had it simply been that long since he’d paid notice?
Within seconds, everything else faded away. He was suspended in space, floating among those specks like he’d dreamed of as a kid. He was an adventurer visiting other galaxies, a fearless explorer. There were no responsibilities anchoring him in place. And for the first time since he could remember, TJ felt free.
“This is what I wanted to show you.” Jo’s voice, like gravity, yanked him back to earth. Again, he lay in the old ballpark. “My pop,” she went on, “he knew everything about the stars. Was a big hobby for him. He’s the one who taught me about constellations making up pictures and whatnot.”
“Yeah?” TJ said. “Like what?”
She gave him a skeptical side-glance. Seeming satisfied by his sincerity, she raised her arm and pointed. “You see those three running up and down in a row?” She waited for him to respond.
“I see ’em.”
“Well, they’re the belt hanging on Orion, the hunter. And next to it, right there, are three more dots that make the line of his sword.” She picked up speed while motioning from one area to the next. “Above him is Taurus, that’s the bull he’s fighting, and on the left are his guard dogs. The lower one is Canis Major, and the star at the top of it is Sirius. That’s the brightest star in the night sky. Believe it or not, it’s almost twice as bright as the next brightest star... .” Not until she trailed off and cut to his gaze did he realize he was staring at her. “Swell.” She looked away. “Now you think I’m a nut job.”
“Actually, I was thinking ...” He was thinking that he’d never noticed what a pretty face she had. Had a naturalness about her. She wasn’t one for wearing makeup, and he sort of liked that—though he wasn’t about to say it. “I was wondering how you remember so much about all of them. The constellations, I mean.”
“Oh. Well. I don’t remember them all. Those are just some of my favorites.”
“What’s so special about them? Compared to the others?”
She lifted a shoulder, signs of embarrassment having fallen away. “I like that they have a whole story. Plus, you can see them from anywhere in the world. It’s kinda nice, don’t you think? Some stranger in a faraway country’s gotta be looking at those very shapes right now.”
Jo turned back to the sky, and after a beat, she quietly added, “Mostly, though, I guess they remind me of my dad. I like to think of him as Sirius, the brightest one. Way up there, watching over me and my brothers.”
Normally TJ would bolt from a moment like this, averse to poking and prodding, yet he felt compelled to hear more. “What exactly happened to your parents?”
“Depends. Which version you lookin’ for?”
He understood the dry response. The local rumor mill had churned out plenty of whoppers about his own family, so he didn’t give much credence to anything he’d heard about Jo’s. When she and her brothers moved into town, to live with their granddad, stories had spread like wildfire. Some claimed her mother ran off with another guy, supposedly a traveling missionary from Canada; others said friendly fire took out her father during the Great War. TJ could have asked Maddie for the real dope, after the girls met in junior high, but he hadn’t considered it any of his business.
Probably still wasn’t.
He decided to nix his question, but then Jo up and answered.
“Plain truth is, my ma died while giving birth to my brother Sidney. I was only two, so I don’t remember much about her, outside her photo. As for Pop ... on the dock where he was working, some wire on a crane broke loose. A load of metal pipes dropped. Folks said he pushed another fella outta the way and that’s why he bought it. Wanna know the screwy thing? It wasn’t even his shift. He was filling in for another guy who’d come down with the flu.” A sad smile crossed her lips. But then she heaved a sigh, and the moisture coating her eyes seemed to evaporate at will. “Just goes to show you. Of the things we’re able to control, death sure ain’t one of them.”
“Pffft, right.” The remark slipped out.
Jo angled her face toward his. She hesitated before asking, “You wanna talk about it? About your parents?” The glow of the moon highlighted a softness in her features. She looked at him with such profound understanding that he genuinely felt the relief of someone sharing his burden.
The cost of the moment, however, was remembering.
Suddenly that horrific night, usually flashing in pieces, stacked like a solid wall of bricks. He closed his eyes and the emergency room flew up around him. His father lay in a hospital bed, forehead and shoulder bandaged, gauze spotted with blood. Bourbon oozing from his pores.
Once he’s conscious, we’ll need him for questioning, the policeman said. There was an accusation in his voice. When TJ’s mind stopped spinning, he found himself in the passenger seat of the officer’s car. Rain hammered the roof as they drove through the streets, shrouded in darkness. With every passing headlight, he saw his father’s sedan winding down the canyon road, colliding with the oncoming truck. He imagined the spontaneous sculpture of bloodied bodies and twisted metal, saw the New Year’s Eve party the couple had left only minutes before the accident.
Cars honked in ignorant celebration as TJ mounted the steps to the morgue. Round and round “Auld Lang Syne” played in his head as the coroner pulled back the sheet—Should old acquaintance be forgot—and TJ nodded once in confirmation. If not for her gray pallor, the absence of breath, his mother could have been sleeping. A doctor arrived to identify the other driver, a widower lacking a family member to do the honors. We’ll drink a cup of kindness yet ... TJ drifted out the doors. He thought of Maddie, and the task of telling her the news when she returned full of laughter and tales from her group holiday concert in San Francisco.
It had been at that moment, outside the morgue with drizzle burning cold down his face, that TJ swore two things: He would protect his sister at all costs; and he would never, for anything in the world, forgive his father for what he did.
“Maybe it would help,” Jo said, “if you talked about it.” The tender encouragement opened TJ’s eyes. “I know it helped me an awful lot when I finally did that with Gramps.”
A sense of comfort washed over TJ, and he couldn’t deny wanting to purge the memories. But how could he put those images into words? And how could Jo truly relate? Her dad was a hero; his own, a murderer. Sure, an inconclusive investigation had prevented any charges—whether it was the truck driver or his father who’d crossed the median, whether booze or the slick road was to blame.
Yet to TJ, the key evidence lay in his father’s reclusion and, more than that, his inability to look his children in the eye.
Jo kept watching, in wait of an answer.
“Another time,” he said, almost believing it himself.
She twisted her lips and nodded thoughtfully.
Rising to his feet, he extended a hand to help her up. She dusted off the back of her overalls, her peacoat. “Home?” she asked.
“Home,” he replied, the word sounding distant and hollow.
13
The morning crept by, chained at the ankles. Lane stole another glimpse at his watch. Don’t worry, he told himself. She’ll be here. She’ll be here.
For three nights in a row, the same scenario had plagued his dreams. Clear as the aqua sky now overhead—unique weather
for a Seattle winter, according to passersby—he had visualized himself in this very spot. On a platform at Union Station, waiting futilely for his fiancée’s arrival.
To quell his concerns, he had contemplated phoning her again from his dorm. Yet calling without warning meant the possibility of reaching TJ or Beatrice and raising unwanted suspicions. Thankfully the charade would soon be over. At last he could tell her brother the truth—presuming cold feet hadn’t kept Maddie from boarding her train.
Although Lane tried to dismiss it, he’d sensed her uncertainty, both at the beach and on the phone. And how could he blame her? A sudden rush to the altar should rightly cause reservations. He just hoped her love for him would be powerful enough to conquer any doubts.
Excited murmurs swirled. A train appeared in the distance, chuffing on tracks that led toward Lane. An eternity bloomed, then wilted, before the dusty locomotive chugged to a standstill. A cloud of steam shot out like an exhale of relief, of which he felt none.
He bounced his heel on the weather-stained concrete, hands fidgeting in his trench coat pockets. Minutes later, passengers poured from the coaches. Men in suits and fedoras, ladies in coats and brimmed hats. Lane’s gaze sifted through the commotion. Families and friends reunited. Children squealed, set free to release their bundled energy. At a faraway glance, he mistook a lady for Maddie, clarified when the stranger angled in his direction. He rose up on the balls of his feet for a better view. But still no sign of her.
Lane confirmed with the conductor that this was the overnighter from Los Angeles—both good and poor news. Could she have missed her train, taken another?
The likelihood of the more obvious taking hold, dread rushed through him. Somehow only with Maddie at his side did defying his parents make sense. Fighting the muzzle that would bind his future to a stranger would require, while hopefully only temporary, a break from his family. Without a strong incentive, rebellion would be hard to justify. Even to himself.
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