Never Say Never

by Lisa Wingate

  He told me last night … The words struck me like a wild pitch, catching me off guard, taking my breath away. Kemp and Jen were together last night? When? Sometime after he and I finished feeding the calf and he took me back to Donetta’s?

  He went to see Jen after he dropped me off? The idea landed in my stomach like a hard right cross, pushing the wind from my lungs.

  The effect must have been obvious, because Jen gave me what seemed like a genuinely sympathetic look, and added, “He didn’t tell you that, did he?”

  I shrugged, trying to cover. He was at school all day yesterday, working. Wasn’t he?

  Had he gone to Dallas for an MRI and not even mentioned it while we were helping at the ranch, or feeding Bottle Baby, or talking about plans for the future, or kissing as the moon drifted into the deepening sky? Why would he do that, and even more to the point, why would he drop me off and then go discuss his future with Jennifer? There isn’t any reason why he would mention it. We’re just friends, I told myself. He mentioned it to Jennifer. She knew. He felt the need to discuss it with her. Why could he tell her the things he wasn’t willing to share with me?

  “Whatever. He doesn’t look at you like a friend.” She leaned close, like we were dishing again. “Listen, I’m just giving you the truth. You seem like a nice girl, and I can’t even guess what it’s like to be in your spot—with the hurricane and all. You can take all this for whatever it’s worth, but Kemp and I’ve been good friends for a really long time. He’s had girls dripping off him since he was in high school, and while he was playing for the Rough Riders and the Rangers. It comes and it goes. When he’s out of the game, when his arm’s hurt and he’s off, he gets involved with somebody, but it never lasts. He always goes back to baseball. He always will. Until some doctor finally tells him his shoulder’s wrecked for good, he’ll always go back, and when he’s chasing the dream, he doesn’t care about anything else but the dream. He doesn’t let anything, or anyone, stand in his way. Period.”

  She didn’t wait for an answer. The door was opening, and Kemp was headed out. She turned to him with a bright smile, patted him on the shoulder as she held open the door, and said, “Better watch it, carrying boxes with the arm.”

  Kemp just chuckled, playfully shrugging off her hand. “Yeah, thanks, Coach. If it gives me any trouble, I’ll drop over and let you get after it with a little cortisone and a horse needle.”

  Lauging, Jen twirled away, her hair orbiting in a shimmering circle. “You let me near you with a horse needle, you’re not gonna get it in the arm, Kemp Eldridge.”

  He laughed along with her, and I felt like the third passenger on a bicycle built for two. I stood numbly watching their interplay, their carefully practiced dance.

  “Wouldn’t be the first time.” Kemp grinned at me as Jen headed toward her car, then he added, “She stuck me in the rear once with a syringe full of tranquilizers when we were working cows. I couldn’t feel my leg for two days.”

  “That was an accident!” Jen’s voice floated like a trail of smoke behind her as she slipped into her vehicle and waved good-bye.

  Then she was gone, and the doorway felt decidedly uncomfortable—on my end, anyway. Kemp seemed fine. Even after we’d finished loading the rest of the food, he was still laughing about Jen, Jenny, Jennifer. “I can’t believe they let her handle sharp objects.”

  I felt myself go numb, felt the painful yet familiar sting of rejection. Perhaps everything was a game to him—baseball, relationships, keeping his aunt on the string, letting her think he was back in Daily for good, playing this little game of cat and mouse with me.

  Why would he do that? Why would he bother? My mind spun like one of the merry-go-rounds Gil and I used to ride in the park. The world was rotating so fast, I couldn’t get my feet onto the platform. I was just hanging on, dragging in the dust.

  “You ready?” Kemp asked.

  “Sure,” I muttered. “Guess we’d better get this stuff out to the ranch.”

  Kemp opened the alley door, then leaned against the frame instead of walking through. Down the hall, the phone rang. He turned an ear toward it, then looked back at me, his eyes almost black in this light, searching my face. “Something wrong?”

  “No.” I picked up a broom that was supposed to go out to the ranch. “Why?”

  “I’m sensing a cold breeze.” I could feel him studying me, trying to figure things out. He wouldn’t. After a lifetime of keeping your details to yourself, you learn not to let the truth show. Especially when the truth is a weapon that’s sharp on both ends.

  “Did Jen say something?”

  “No. She was very nice, actually.” Jen was just looking out for me, after all. She just wanted me to know what the score really was.

  His lips straightened into an impassive line. “Jen has a few different ways of being nice… .”

  “I just have things on my mind, all right?” I cut in, feeling impatient, trapped in a small space with him and the truth. I couldn’t think straight. All I could see was Kemp stopping by Jennifer’s house for intimate late-night conversations about his medical tests and the future. Intimate late-night conversations and what else? “Guess we’d better head on out to the ranch.”

  He didn’t move. “What things?”

  “What things … what?”

  Pulling off his cap, he scratched his head, then put the cap on again. “What things do you have on your mind?”

  “Nothing, I—” just found out I’m only a little passing entertainment—something to do in the off-season. Not worth confiding in, really—“just heard from the cruise line. It’s time for me to get back to work. My mind’s on catching a flight, and … I’m trying to decide what to do about my Microbus … and the dogs, and …” A lump rose in my throat, and I swallowed hard, leaving the sentence unfinished. Why was this so difficult? It wasn’t like I’d never broken off a relationship before. What Kemp and I had wasn’t even a relationship. It was just a few days … a few stolen moments.

  Perfect moments. What if I never found anything else that felt so perfect?

  When he’s out of the game, when his arm’s hurt and he’s off, he gets involved with somebody, but it never lasts. He always goes back to baseball. He always will.

  If breaking it off was painful now, how bad would it be if I let things drag on? When he’s chasing the dream, he doesn’t care about anything else but the dream. Wasn’t that the thing I most despised about my father? The dream came first. His dream. His needs. His music. The rest of us were a sidenote.

  I didn’t want to be a sidenote in someone’s life again. I wouldn’t. Ever.

  One way or another, I had to get out of Daily before I fell any deeper, before I did exactly what my mother had done, and history repeated itself.

  Kemp tapped a thumb against his bottom lip contemplatively. “When did this come up?”

  I fumbled for a lie. My mind was cloudy with emotion, tiny dust devils whirling around the edges of my thoughts. “A few minutes ago. They … called my cell.”

  He looked down, watched a dry leaf skitter in the door. “How long will you be gone?”

  “I don’t know exactly.”

  “When do you leave?”

  “I’m not quite sure.” His face narrowed, and I read the emotions there. Uncertainty, confusion, disbelief. This was probably a new experience for him. No doubt, he was usually the one doing the dumping. “I’m still under contract with the cruise line. I can’t just … hang around here forever, doing nothing.”

  His chin jerked upward at the words doing nothing, and his shoulders stiffened, as if he’d just taken a blow, as if I’d wounded him. Where only a moment ago, I’d felt certainty, determination, now doubt moved in like a fog, making clarity impossible. Maybe I was making a mistake. Maybe Jen was just trying to get me out of the way… .

  But then, why would he have gone for an MRI yesterday and never said a word to me? We’d been together yesterday morning for breakfast, again in the afternoon, all eve
ning. He’d come into the shop that afternoon whistling, with an extra spring in his step. His aunt had asked him how his day was. “Great,” he’d said. “You know high-school kids. It’s something new every time you turn around.” Not, I went to Dallas. The MRI was clear… .

  Why would he lie if Jen’s assessment wasn’t accurate? He was playing me, maybe even fooling himself, keeping himself entertained until he found out if he would be getting a better offer. The better offer being baseball. That was really what he’d been working toward all along. His life in Daily, this old shoe, was just an act, an illusion, a way to pass the time. The coach-slash-teacher-slash-hopeless romantic wasn’t real, any more than my pretending I’d be staying there was.

  If something seems too good to be true, it usually is, Kai-bird. My mother’s advice again. Someone in our family had to be remotely practical.

  Everything about Kemp’s life here made perfect sense now. The office with the personal items still in boxes in the corner, the way he didn’t quite seem comfortable when the kids talked about next season, the bottle baby calf he’d told me he needed to get rid of, even the way he dodged my questions about whether he was happy in Daily. Happiness is something you decide on, he’d said, but the truth was that he wasn’t happy outside of baseball, and he never had been. Jen knew it, and maybe that was why Kemp felt the need to share the good news about his MRI with her. She understood him. She knew him in a way he perhaps didn’t even know himself.

  An old song played in my head. My mother used to sing along whenever it came on the radio. Don’t fall in love with a dreamer …

  Because he’ll break you every time, the song went on to say. My mother knew all about dreams that didn’t come true. Our life was a constant process of my father doing whatever felt good to him at the moment. His art, his music, his quest for fame and easy money always came first, and the rest of us were unwilling passengers on his wandering ship.

  Not me. Not any longer. Not when I’d worked so hard to pull my life together. The last thing, the absolute last thing I wanted was to remember what it felt like to be rejected, to be pushed aside by someone you loved, to come in second place. Anything, even making a clean break now, was better than that.

  “Are you planning on leaving without ever going over to McGregor to see about your grandmother?” Kemp’s words were low and quiet, the tone of them hard to read.

  An unsteadiness came over me. Every day when we reached the end of the driveway after feeding Bottle Baby, Kemp asked if I wanted to go to McGregor. We can drive the back way from here, he’d say, then he’d lighten the moment with something like, It’s enemy territory, but for you, I’d go, or I wouldn’t head over to Bulldog land for just anybody… .

  Maybe tomorrow, I’d tell him. I promised Donetta I’d help put together the breakfast casseroles tonight, remember? Or I’d better check on the dogs. Hope Radar didn’t dig his way under the fence again.

  At night when I slept, I made that trip to Grandmother Miller’s house over and over again. Each time, the result was different. Sometimes good, sometimes bad, the imaginings as unpredictable as life.

  “I don’t know,” I answered now. “I’m not sure of —” anything— “my departure time.”

  Kemp’s lips pursed skeptically. I thought of how it felt to kiss those lips, and the familiar headiness slipped over me. It would be so easy. So much nicer to go on pretending.

  So much more painful to come back to reality later. It was hard enough now.

  “We’ll just play it by ear then, huh?” he said finally. “See if—”

  “Pickle? Pickle-poo, you still here?” Donetta’s voice preempted the sentence. Kemp answered as his aunt came up the hall.

  Donetta surveyed the distance between the two of us, reading the body language with latent suspicion. “Hon, we got a little problem. Pastor Harve just called from out at Caney Creek Church, and a couple of the older ladies in Sister Mona’s bunch ain’t getting on too well out at the ranch. Sleepin’ on the cots and sittin’ around in lawn chairs all day has them stove up. Poor old Obeline can’t hardly even walk. A cot’s no place to sleep when you’re as old as Obeline. You think you and Kai could go out there and bring them back here so they can stay in the hotel? Y’all can drive Imagene’s van along with the truck, so there’ll be plenty of room to bring the ladies back. Betty Prine was in the café yesterday, and she said her and Harold are packin’ up to head for Arkansas so she can take care of her cousin. That means there won’t be any Prines nosing around for a while.”

  “Sure. No problem, ” Kemp answered, then hesitated and slanted a glance at me. “You’d better ask Kai if she’s got time to drive the van out to the ranch, though.”

  Donetta drew back, the keys dangling from her fingers, her penciled-on eyebrows knotting in her forehead. “You don’t mind helpin’ out, do ya’, hon? The van’s right out front.”

  All of a sudden I realized that, by telling Kemp I was going back to work, I’d created a situation in which I was going to have to lie to everyone. The only real solution was to call the cruise line, get my marching orders, figure out what to do with the Microbus and Don’s dogs, and turn the lie into truth. “Sure. Of course I have time,” I answered, and Donetta dropped the keys into my hand.

  “I’ll bring the truck around, and you can follow me.” Kemp headed out the door.

  Donetta watched him go before turning to me. “Everythin’ all right?” Laying a hand on my shoulder, she leaned close as we started through the café building.

  “Everything’s fine.” Tell her. Just tell her and be done with it. But I knew if I told Donetta I was leaving, she’d want details, and I didn’t have them yet. I didn’t know by what means I was going to break away from Daily, Texas; I only knew I needed to.

  She squeezed my shoulder, and I felt the tug of inconveniently tender emotions. Leaving Donetta, Imagene, Lucy, and the rest of the Dailyians behind would be almost as hard as leaving Kemp.

  “Well, good. We’ll see y’all in a bit, then.” We crossed the café, and she held the front door open, then walked with me to the curb, checking the street in both directions. “When y’all get back, come around the alley door to my buildin’, all right? Just in case Betty hasn’t left out yet. No sense takin’ any chances.”

  Chapter 23

  Donetta Bradford

  When Kemp and Kai came in with Obeline, Sister Mona, and two other ladies, we gals’d just sat down for some coffee and pie. We were celebrating like kids on the first day of summer vacation, knowing that Betty Prine was on her way out of town. Buddy Ray’d called from the Sheriff’s Department not three minutes before and said he was sitting there behind the desk, watching Betty and Harold load the last of their suitcases and close the trunk, which meant anytime now they’d blow out of Daily like a bad wind.

  “Come on in!” I called to Obeline and the ladies. “We got a fresh pot of coffee and there’s pecan pie.”

  The ladies walked up the back hall, looking embarrassed and apologizing for interrupting our day. I guessed they figured they were putting us out by asking for a different place for the older folks to stay.

  “Don’t even worry a bit,” I told them. “Y’all are more than welcome to them hotel rooms. That’s what they’re for, is for folks to stay in. Sit down and have a bite, and Kemp’ll take your suitcases upstairs.”

  The ladies all wandered in and took a chair, and Kemp took charge of their luggage. After making a stack by the stairs, he went behind the counter to get the room keys.

  “Pickle, hon,” I said, “while you’re up there, would you grab that boot box that’s in the white chest of drawers in the Beulah suite? I want to see if I can find a picture of the old farm down on the Dogleg, just in case Obeline would remember anythin’ about Mama’s people.”

  “All right.” Kemp wasn’t cheerful as usual. I wondered what that was all about, and then I noticed that Kai didn’t go upstairs or turn around and watch after him with a starry-eyed gaze, like she normally woulda
. Somethin’ was wrong. That gal had a long, sad look on her face, and instead of sittin’ with the rest of us, she stood over in the corner, doing something with her cell phone. Then she got a call and went way up by the front window to take it, where we couldn’t hear her.

  When Kemp come back with my box, she just kept on with what she was doin’. He gave me my photo books, and I cut him a piece of pie, because he looked like he needed it. “Here, hon. Go fix yourself a cup of coffee before you finish carrying up them suitcases.”

  I opened up the box and started thumbing through, looking for pictures of the old farm and Mamee’s little house down on the Dogleg Bayou. That box was about as organized as my mind, unfortunately, and all I could find was pictures of Kemp and Lauren when they were kids—Kemp with his little baseball suit on, and his sister riding in the barrel racin’ and the goat tyin’ at rodeos, and the two of them dressed up like Dorothy and the Tin Man for Halloween. Obeline leaned up and looked real close, even though I doubt that was very interestin’ to her. I pulled out an old black cardboard frame and found a picture of me in my pretty Christmas dress, all gussied up for the 4-H style show.

  Imagene leaned over and giggled. “Oh my word, look at that hair!”

  “Is-a not a hair, is-a march-een hat!” Lucy hooted, holding her hands up around her head like she had on one of them tall, furry hats the Daily High School Band wore for marching.

  “I worked real hard on that.” I tried to act like they’d hurt my feelings, but they knew better. Even I, who understood the value of big hair as much as anybody, had to admit it’s possible to go too big. That giant puff with the little bow in front looked like it oughta have hornets livin’ in it.

  “Gal-ee! I’m’ma say that hairdo, that makin’ its own patch of shade!” Sister Mona chimed in, and everyone hooted again.

  Soon as I caught my breath, I dug back into the box some more. “Hold on a minute, I got to show you Imagene at the 4-H style show. Just wait’ll you see the hairdo she has on.” We gals’d fixed each other’s hair that evenin’, and I remembered clear as day piling Imagene’s up so high she looked like the blond bride a’ Frankenstein. “Hang on a minute … I got …”