by Josie Kerr
And then he saw her. Candy was on the front porch, poking a scarlet-tipped talon directly in the center of Liddie’s naturally ample bosom. His ex-wife was dressed to the nines with full professional-grade makeup, but her face was screwed up in a sneer, her eyes almost crazed.
Liddie, in complete contrast, wore no makeup, her hair pulled back in two ridiculous, uneven pigtails, and Tobias’s “Praise the Lard” T-shirt and a pair of capri leggings. She wore a resigned look, like she was indulging a child throwing a tantrum.
“Candy, you need to do two things,” Tobias heard Liddie say. “You need to get the hell off my porch, but first you need to calm your ass down so you don’t get into a wreck while you are leaving said porch.”
“I am fine,” Candy seethed through clenched teeth. “I just can’t believe you two are . . . parading around town, happy as you please.”
“You are crazy. C-r-a-z-y. Who cares, Candy? We’re both single. We’re both adults. It’s not like we’re underage and sneaking around.”
“But his car was here overnight, Liddie. This is a family neighborhood.”
Liddie’s mouth dropped open. “Well, la-di-damn-da. Since when are you concerned with what’s proper and what’s not? Neither one of us is married, and it’s not like one of us is having an affair with the other’s parent. OH WAIT.”
Tobias heard Candy gasp at the mention of her affair with Chet. The affair had been the elephant in the room for many years, an open secret that Tobias had been unwilling to accept the reality of until it became too obvious. Even on his deathbed, Chet was unwilling to admit he’d done Tobias wrong; in fact, he’d still blamed Tobias for his tarnished reputation. (Somehow, revivals and family funfests didn’t want to hire an unapologetic adulterer who was living in sin with his son’s ex-wife.) Now, it was very apparent that Candy shared the same delusional attitude as her longtime lover.
Tobias watched Candy’s hand come up, almost as if it was in slow motion. He heard the too-familiar sound of flesh hitting flesh, something he never wanted to experience again, and he saw Liddie’s head rear back from the impact of Candy’s slap.
Oh, hell no.
He threw open the door, and let the dogs do their job. Those little dogs hated Candy because she hated them and made sure they knew it. In a blur of sharp teeth and loud baying, Winnie and Frankie swarmed Candy like two six-inch-tall berserkers.
Candy shrieked, “Get them off! Get them off!” as the dogs continued to nip at her ankles and exposed toes.
Meanwhile, Tobias stepped onto the porch and pulled Liddie against him. He examined her face, the red handprint blooming across her cheek. Most likely, Liddie was going to have a black eye and a bruised cheekbone later.
“You okay, sweetheart?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine. It’s just . . .” Liddie’s voice trailed off and she shook her head. “Who knew we’d be dealing with this crap after all these years?”
Tobias kissed her forehead and nodded. “I know, but this particular issue ends right here. You want to press charges?”
“Charges?” Candy shrieked. “What the hell, Tobias?”
Tobias stepped in between the two women and snapped his fingers, and the dogs, though still snarling and snapping, went and sat at his feet. “Trespassing, for one—Liddie told you to leave. And two, assault. She’s going to be lucky if her eye and cheek aren’t black. She can’t sub with a black eye, so you just deprived her of her livelihood.”
Candy’s eyes bugged out in either fear or incredulous anger (Tobias had his money on anger). Liddie stepped beside Tobias, and he put his arm around her.
“Candy, just leave, please.” Liddie rubbed her eyebrow, wincing when she touched an area on the side of her face that Candy had slapped. “You just need to leave us alone, both of us.”
Candy glared at both of them, then she lifted her head, eyes blazing. Tobias knew that look, and he didn’t like it one bit.
“I can’t believe I ever saw anything in you, Toby. You’re just a coward who hides behind other people and takes your father’s sloppy seconds.”
Tobias felt Liddie stiffen beside him. “Candy, shut up and go,” Liddie said, her voice quiet and broken.
A mean smile spread across Candy’s face. “You don’t know. She didn’t tell you.” Candy threw back her head and laughed. “Liddie, I think you need to come clean as to what exactly happened graduation night after you two got caught not having sex in that stupid old truck of Tobias’s.” Candy cut her eyes over to Tobias and then to Liddie. “Sloppy fucking seconds. That’s all you’re good for, Tobias Harper.”
Candy spun on her high-heeled sandal and stomped off across the yard. Normally, Tobias would have laughed when she got her heel caught in the soft dirt and had to actually remove her shoe to release it from the earth, but he was too busy staring at Liddie. The woman he loved, and he’d recently admitted to himself that, yes, he did and always had loved her with all his heart, leaned against the pink siding, silently sobbing.
Liddie couldn’t breathe, and she couldn’t stop crying, a terrible combination. She needed to get her emotions under control, to get it together so she could explain things to Tobias before everything was permanently ruined.
“Liddie, honey, let’s go into the house.” Tobias approached her slowly, as if afraid he was going to spook her.
She sucked in a snuffling, watery breath but didn’t move, just stayed motionless with her back against the siding. She knew she needed to go inside. The nice couple across the street, who had come out into their front yard right after Candy arrived, were now watching her porch very carefully, and Liddie guessed that one of them was trying to ascertain if they should call the police or not.
“You know Candy is toxic. She’s been poisonous for years. We can talk about and work through anything, sweetheart.”
Tobias sounded so reasonable, so calm, at least now. He was just standing across from her, looking a little concerned, which was good because earlier he’d seemed very alarmed at her sudden emotional outburst. She couldn’t say she blamed him, though. She felt like a lunatic. She was pretty sure she seemed like a lunatic, cycling through at least three extreme emotions in a span of about two and a half minutes. Yeah, that would be concerning to watch.
Now Tobias was holding the door open for her, trying to guide her inside the house. Even his dogs were trying to entice her to get indoors by running back and forth across the threshold. She looked him in the eye, and all she saw was affection and concern. She took a deep breath and pushed off the wall. Tobias smiled at her, encouraging her as he herded her into the house.
Liddie walked, zombielike, into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water from the pitcher she kept in the refrigerator. Tobias hovered around in entryway, watching her but not saying anything, as she downed the drink. She refilled her glass and drained it again, then put the used glass in the dishwasher. She knew she was stalling, putting off the inevitable. What was worse was that Tobias knew it, too, and she imagined he was going to get impatient very soon.
Hell, she was getting impatient with herself.
“Talk to me. Please.”
Tobias was leaning against the bar now, looking slightly less patient and a little irritated.
“As much as we’ve talked about things, we haven’t really talked about that night, about what happened, have we?”
Tobias’s handsome face screwed up in a frown. “That night when I found you on the dock, we did. You told me about your father shipping you off like some unwanted pet—”
“No, I mean, like, right after.” Liddie swallowed hard. She lifted a shaking hand to her head and pushed her hair back from her face.
He came to her then, gently putting his hands on her shoulders and turning her toward him. “Liddie, darlin’, whatever is going on, whatever happened then, it doesn’t matter, okay? It’s done. It’s in the past.”
She looked up at him with teary eyes. “But it’s not. It can’t ever be. As hard as I try, I can’t be fi
nished—I can’t be done—because it’s a part of me.” She swallowed hard. “It’s a part of who I am.”
“Liddie—”
“I shouldn’t have gone with him. I should have made the sheriff take me home. I . . . I just should have done a lot of things differently.”
“Shouldn’t have gone with whom? Whom shouldn’t you have gone with?” Tobias’s voice was hushed, quiet, too still, like the moments before a tornado.
“Chet. Chet offered to take me home. His exact words were, ‘Come on, little girl. Let’s make sure you get what you deserve.’ ”
She watched the color drain from Tobias’s face. He knew. She didn’t even have to tell him what happened next, because she could tell by his expression—his broken, heartbreaking expression—that he knew without a doubt how his father had violated her.
“Liddie—” Tobias’s face crumpled, and his voice caught in his throat. “Oh God, I am . . .” He collapsed against the wall as if her words physically punched him in the gut. Then he turned to her. “Why? Why didn’t you tell me?”
She shook her head because she didn’t really know why she didn’t, couldn’t, tell him. With a grunt of frustration, Tobias punched the wall hard enough to crush the drywall. Liddie flinched when she heard the impact, though she wasn’t exactly sure why. Was it because she’d have to repair the hole in the wall? Because he might have hurt his hand? Because his anger frightened her? Maybe a combination of all those things, along with a myriad of others.
“I think maybe you need to leave, Tobias,” she half whispered.
“What?” He whipped around to look at her. “What?”
Liddie cleared her throat and spoke a little louder. “You need to go home, Tobias.”
“Do not do this, Liddie Hopewell. Don’t do this to me.” Liddie could see his jaw working, clenching and unclenching. “Don’t let him ruin this.”
Liddie felt her mouth twist into a sad smile. “He already did. A long time ago.” She swallowed hard. “Goodbye, Tobias.”
“Liddie—”
“Please?”
“We’re not done—”
“For right now we are. At least, I am.”
Tobias stood and stared at her for a long moment, then he went into the living room, scooped up his dogs, and left the house. Liddie stayed in the kitchen until she heard the crunch of tires on gravel, signaling his departure. Then she sank down to the floor and began to cry.
“Toby, answer the phone. Kat ran into Liddie today at the market and said she wasn’t looking good—skinny and sad. Kat also said that Liddie said she hadn’t seen or talked to you in two weeks. I talked to Marty, and he said you’d been back in town for about that long. What’s going on, man? I know you’re having some sort of come-undone, but I don’t know why. Gimme a call, Big Brother, or I’m gonna come to your house, and you’re not going to like what I say when I get there. Okay, that didn’t come out quite how I meant it to sound. Just call me, Toby.”
´*•.¸(*•.¸ *¸.•*´)¸.•*´
“Oi, Harper. Pick up, b’y. Mick here. I ran into your brother last night, and he told me you’ve, um, had a setback. I don’t want to pile on, but I need to know if you’re going to be good to sit with Skankin’ Janey Mac. If not, I’m going to have to find someone else. Sorry, man, but business is business. Let me know, regardless, and also know that I’m around if you need to talk. Give me a call, sooner rather than later. Bye.”
´*•.¸(*•.¸ *¸.•*´)¸.•*´
“Okay, Toby, you’re pissing me off, and you know that takes a fuckton of work to do. What the hell are you doing? I mean, besides sitting in your underwear, feeling sorry for yourself, and eating Thin Mints. You need to call Liddie and apologize for whatever your cranky ass did to her—or whatever you didn’t do for her, which is probably more likely. Just do it.”
“Man, I have got to get with the twenty-first century and get voicemail instead of an answering machine.”
Tobias plucked two cookies out of the sleeve and then threw the box back in the freezer. Leave it to Nolan to suck all the pleasure out of a good sulk. He muttered to himself as he wandered back into the living room and plopped down on the couch. Winnie and Frankie sat on their blanket on the adjoining cushion and watched him pop a cookie into his mouth.
“You can’t have these. Chocolate’s not good for little girls like you,” he said. He ate the last cookie and wiped the remnants of chocolate on his sweatpants.
“Not sitting in my underwear either, Baby Bro, because they’re all dirty.”
Tobias turned on the television and began flipping through the channels, not really even registering what was on any of them. He hadn’t done anything in a month—hadn’t picked up an instrument, hadn’t tinkered with any music, hadn’t edited any of his home recordings. Nothing. His muse had abandoned him the same day Liddie shut him out. Oh, at the beginning, she was wringing her hands and noodling around in his head, but she’d quieted down to the point of being silent except for small blips of angry riffs.
He stopped scanning the channels when he saw Lloyd Dobler. Liddie loved this damn movie. They’d gone to see it on one of the few actual dates they’d had. Damn, he missed her. Before he knew it, his phone was in his hand and the line was ringing, ringing, ringing, and then Liddie’s voicemail recording played in his ear. He hung up without leaving a message but was heartened a bit—at least she hadn’t rejected his call, unlike the last time he’d attempted to contact her.
He was still angry, so angry, but not at her—well, maybe a little at her, only because she was being stubborn and thwarting any attempt at communicating with her. He’d gone to her regular grocery store at the usual time she did her shopping, and hung around long enough for a police officer to approach him and tell him to move along. He’d even dropped by Saffy McNab’s place, which was way out of his comfort zone, and gotten honey and goat milk soap—lots of both—just in hopes that she might stop in. Saffy had given him a deep discount and patted his hand. He’d never felt more pitiful.
A loud knock on the door caused Winnie and Frankie to fly off the couch and Tobias to groan. He heaved himself up and ambled to the door, but not before another knock reverberated through the front of the house.
“Man, I’m coming. Keep your damn shirt on. Jeez,” Tobias grumbled and pulled the door open without checking to see who it was.
“Oh, hell.”
“Good to see you, too, Tobias.” Liddie’s uncle Bunny grinned at him. “Do you mind—”
“I need to sit down. Those stairs did me in.” Ace pushed past Tobias and made a beeline to the living room.
“Make yourself at home, Ace,” Tobias muttered before turning to Bunny, who was hiding a smile behind his hand. “Hello, Bunny.”
“We’ll not stay too long, Tobias. We want to talk to you about Liddie. Just please hear us out. Okay?” Bunny waited on the porch until Tobias stepped aside and gestured for him to come in.
“Go on into the living room and have a seat. Can I get you something to drink? Cold water? Sweet tea? Coca-Cola? Bourbon?” Tobias had already decided that he was having a little Coca-Cola in his bourbon. Ace’s eyes lit up when he saw the bottle of Jim Beam, which earned the older man a tongue cluck from his partner, whom he proceeded to ignore.
“Sure I can’t get you anything, Bunny?” Tobias wagged the bottle at Bunny, who threw up hands in defeat and finally nodded.
After quickly making three cocktails, Tobias joined the uncles in the living room and braced for a barrage of criticism. Instead, Bunny looked at Ace with a cocked eyebrow, and Ace rolled his eyes.
“Liddie’s in trouble,” Ace began without preamble. “She’s not doing well at all, physically or mentally.” Tobias opened his mouth to respond, but Ace held his hand up. “Just let me finish, son. We know it is not your fault. We actually didn’t know the specifics of why she was sent away in the first place until very recently. And now we understand that this situation, even though it happened thirty years ago, affects you in
more ways than we’d ever imagined.”
Bunny interrupted Ace. “What we’re trying to ask is, ‘How are you doing?’ Liddie has a support network whether she wants one or not. You don’t. You never have. You have your brothers, but you haven’t told anyone about anything, have you? Do they even know about that night?”
Tobias studied his ice cubes as they clinked in the cut-glass lowball glass. Without looking up, he simply said, “Nope.”
“You should tell them.”
“Why?” Tobias bleated a helpless laugh. “Why do it? Chet’s dead and he can’t be punished for all the shit he put us through. Liddie’s old man is dead, so he doesn’t have to answer to anything. The only person who’s still around is Candy fucking Bristol, and the less anyone has to come in contact with that toxic bitch, the better.” Tobias was tempted to throw his glass at the wall, but he had company and he was down to three tumblers of the original set. Instead, he just set the glass down hard. “They ruined her—ruined her—every single one of them. And I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t know if I can fix it.” Tobias swiped at the moisture that leaked from his eyes. “Hell, I don’t even care if we end up together. I just want her to be happy and safe.”
Ace was swirling the ice in his now-empty glass. The clinking was driving Tobias nuts, so much so that he snatched the glass from the uncle and went to refill his glass. “Let me get you a refill,” he offered, grateful for a distraction.
“No hooch this time—just CoCola.”
Tobias grinned as he poured the soft drink into the glass. “Mama called it that, too.”
“I remember your mama. She was a sweet woman.” Ace accepted the glass from Tobias but didn’t drink from it. “I was always worried about her, with your father. We tried to warn her away from him, but you know how it was—the man was scary charismatic.”
Bunny snorted. “He was plain scary. He had a cruel streak a mile wide, but then again, like begets like.”
