by T. L. Haddix
“He probably will this evening when they get home. He hates going to ballgames. If it wasn’t for Mom dragging him to them, he’d probably only go once a month or so, if then.”
Zanny moved to the middle of the rock, picked up a particularly bright oak leaf, and twirled it around and around on its stem. “Doesn’t that bother Amelia? That he has to be coerced into going?”
John smiled. “No. Because when he’s there? He’s totally there. He was the same way when I played, and when Ben and Emma played.”
“I remember Emma saying that now. She was half-embarrassed by his enthusiasm, but she had to be. The teenager curse, you know.” She brought the leaf to her face, sniffing it as though it were a flower. “Do you think we’ll be like that with our kids?”
“Probably. Although I don’t think either of us has the problem going out in public Dad has, so it will be easier for us to embarrass them.”
Zanny laughed, imagining the scene, and cradled her belly. “Do you think this one is a boy?”
John shrugged. “Fifty-fifty chance this one—”
Watching her words penetrate his brain was almost comical.
“Wait a minute. This one? Implying there will be more than one Campbell-Franks collaboration?”
In answer, she eased down onto his lap and slid her arms around his neck. “Let’s get married, John.”
He didn’t say anything for several long seconds, just tenderly stroked her hair back off her face. When he spoke, his voice was rough with emotion. “That sounds like an excellent idea.”
They decided that after they’d applied for their marriage license Monday morning, John would drive back to Richmond. He would be able to attend his afternoon classes, and then that next weekend, he and Zanny would exchange their vows.
“Do you think Uncle Eli would perform the ceremony?” John asked after the excitement from the announcement died down. Eli Wells, Owen’s uncle on his mother’s side, was an ordained minister. He had officiated at Owen and Sarah’s wedding, and all the kids had grown up knowing Eli as a grandfather. Though he was nearly seventy, he was still in good health and active.
“If you go down there and ask him in person, he might,” Owen answered. “Think you’re up to making a trip tomorrow?” Eli lived in Laurel County, which was about ninety minutes down the parkway from Hazard.
John looked to Zanny for confirmation, and she nodded. “Then yes. I should probably call and see if he’s busy.”
“John said that Eli wouldn’t be angry when he finds out everything,” Zanny said as he got up to head to the phone in the kitchen. He paused in the doorway to hear his father’s response.
“Eli’s strict, but he’s also kind. He’ll probably sit the two of you down for a long conversation, and I can almost guarantee you it will get pointed, given the circumstances, but it’s because he cares. He’ll want to make sure you’re as good a fit as you think you are. Sarah and I had to go through it.” Owen clasped Sarah’s hand and kissed the back of it. “We survived, and you will, too.”
The look his parents exchanged was so intimate and full of love that John felt like an intruder who’d walked in on something private. He stepped to the couch and reached down to Zanny, resting his hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him and winked.
John winked back. “I’ll go make the call.”
Chapter Fourteen
After they were married, they decided it would be best if John went back to school and finished out the semester. Even though he was at a boarding house and not in a dorm room, the accommodations weren’t ideal for a pregnant woman.
“As much as I want to be with you, it will be better for you and the baby if you stay with Mom and Dad. Besides, it’s only a few weeks, and then I’ll be home. I can drive down on the weekends. I’ll be here for Thanksgiving.…”
“I know,” Zanny told him with a sniffle. “I’ll just miss you.”
“I’ll miss you, too. But I’ll be back and in your hair all the time before you know it.” He tucked her close under his chin, wrapping his arms around her tightly. It was the night before he was set to go back to school, and they were in bed. Eli had married them in Laurel County the day before, and they had gotten a hotel room in London as a brief honeymoon. John’s family was staying with Eli and his wife, Amy, at their farm and were planning to pick up Zanny in the morning to take her home.
“Do you really think they’ll let you take those last two classes from Hazard?” Zanny asked.
“I think so. I don’t want to say that I’m teacher’s pet, but I kind of am,” he admitted sheepishly. “And if Mr. Hopper decides to hire me? They’ll probably take that into consideration.”
Dave Hopper was the man who owned the accounting firm John had interned with. John had reached out to him, and after matter-of-factly explaining the situation, he asked if there might be a job for him at the firm. Hopper hadn’t made any commitments right then, but he had promised to call John in the upcoming week with an answer.
“In the meantime, while I’m finishing up in Richmond, we’ve got to figure out where we’re going to live.”
“I know. I’ve already started looking for rentals. I just wish I could drive so that I didn’t have to bother your parents when I need to go somewhere.”
John smiled. “You’ve got a great teacher at your disposal, you know. Take full advantage of that.”
Zanny lifted her head and touched the tip of his nose. “You’ll be in Richmond.”
“I don’t mean me,” he laughed. “I mean Mom. She’s taught all three of us, and she’ll teach Rachel and Amelia. I helped you get the basics, but she can fine-tune things. And you’re going to need to be able to drive.”
“I know. I figured you’d say your dad is the better teacher. Since he’s a man.”
John laughed. “Oh, no. He gets…unbearably bossy and just tetchy. It’s like he’s a different person. Driver’s Ed might be the one thing Owen Campbell isn’t good at. But enough talk for now.” John cupped her shoulder, then slid his hand down her arm to her wrist. “I have this, uh, issue I need your help with.”
Zanny let him tug her on top of him without protest. “That’s an issue that has come up several times now.”
“It hasn’t come up that much.”
She giggled at his sputtering “outrage” and slid her hand down his belly. “I guess we’d better take care of it again. Though if this continues, you might want to have it looked at.”
John wrapped his arms and legs around her and rolled her over in the king-sized bed, bracing himself above her. “Make sure when you’re finding our stuff for wherever we’re going to live, you find a big bed. I like having all this room to play with you.” And after that, there were only whispers and sighs.
Later, as they drifted off to sleep, John realized that even if they had gotten things in the right order, he didn’t know how it could have possibly been better than it was right then.
Chapter Fifteen
Five years later…
March 4, 1988
“Thank you so much for doing this, Sarah,” Zanny told her mother-in-law as she picked up the toys from the living room floor. “I really appreciate it.”
Sarah made a silly face at two-year-old Eli, making him giggle and lean back in her arms. “Sweetie, we’re tickled to do it. You know we like baby time. Don’t we, Noah?”
Four-year-old Noah, who was handing his mother toys, nodded and smiled up at Zanny with a smile so like John’s that her heart melted. Noah was her quiet boy, very cautious and reserved, and getting one of his smiles was like discovering treasure.
“To tell you the truth, I’m a little embarrassed,” Zanny confessed to Sarah. “We really didn’t plan this. I mean, Eli won’t even be two until August.” She had just found out she was pregnant again, with their third child. She’d asked Sa
rah to take the boys so she could tell John in private that evening.
“Don’t be. It happens. And honestly? I love having grandbabies to spoil. Just think of how many babies I’ll have to love if all of you all give me three or four each.” She blew a raspberry on Eli’s neck, and he squealed with delight. “Seriously, I know you’re a little upset. But I think John will be happy once you tell him.”
Zanny wasn’t so sure. “He’s been…distant lately. And I can’t get him to talk to me. I worry that getting the house, and now this? It’s just too much.”
They’d bought their first house in the fall. The four-bedroom cottage was everything Zanny wanted, with a white picket fence and big oak trees. Even the name of the street, Butterfly Lane, had seemed perfect. Later, she’d wondered if the purchase had been a mistake, but the little house they’d been renting had gotten too small for the growing boys.
Sarah frowned, tilting her head to the side. “Think it’s just tax-season stress?”
“I don’t know. He hasn’t been like this before, not even the year Noah was born, and we were both scared to death.”
Zanny could tell the words concerned John’s mother, but Sarah didn’t try to tell her she was overreacting. That was something Zanny appreciated.
“Well, if things don’t go as well as I think they will and you need to talk, just call me. I can come down here.”
“I will. Thank you.”
After Sarah left, Zanny got cleaned up and ready to go surprise John. She had gotten a new dress, had done her nails and hair, and was planning to take him out to dinner. She’d even prepared their bedroom with candles and rose petals, thinking that if nothing else, she could seduce him into telling her what was wrong.
She tried to not think about that too much—seduction. Though they still had an active sex life, as evidenced by her latest pregnancy, things had changed after Noah was born. They were still good. Zanny still enjoyed their intimacy, and she thought John did, as well. But the heat and passion that had flared between them early on was not as prevalent anymore.
With that, the stress of buying and moving into their new house, having two children under five years old, and another on the way, Zanny was terrified she was losing him. He worked closely with a very attractive, very single CPA at the office, and he’d been putting in a lot of overtime. Though John had laughed when Zanny had suggested the other woman was interested in him, she’d known she wasn’t wrong. Her only question was whether or not John found the other woman attractive in return. That was a question Zanny was too afraid to ask.
Before she left the house, she took one long, critical look at herself in the full-length mirror on the bathroom door. She didn’t look half bad. She’d gained a little weight over the last five years, maybe fifteen pounds, and though she wasn’t pleased about that, with the new fullness in her breasts from the pregnancy, everything balanced out. The dress was red, a color Zanny had never worn much of, and the cut was a little provocative.
“If John Campbell doesn’t like me in this, there’s no hope for him,” she told her reflection. With a heartfelt, half-sick prayer, she headed for the car. “Here we go.”
John checked his watch and stifled a yawn. He was surprised that the clock was just striking five o’clock, and even though he had a tall stack of folders waiting at the corner of his desk for his attention, he was just about done for the day.
“I can come in tomorrow for a little while,” he muttered, then remembered that he was supposed to help Zanny put in new flower beds. “Shit.” Scrubbing a hand over his face, he closed his eyes.
Zanny hadn’t been sleeping well the last couple of weeks, and so neither had John. He had a sneaking suspicion he knew why that was, but he hoped he was wrong. As much as he loved his little family, he wasn’t quite ready to add to it again. He’d hoped they would have a few years, at least, before they had another child. He would die for his sons, but he wanted a few years with Zanny before he had to share her attention with another baby.
“And that makes you an ass supreme, John David.”
“Are you in here talking to yourself?” The soft female voice belonged to his fellow CPA, Tracy Ward. She stopped in the doorway to his office, leaning against it casually in a move that John felt was intended to show off her rather impressive body.
“I am. And on that note, I think it’s time I headed home.” He stood and grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair, hoping he wouldn’t have to get short with her in order to get her to move.
When she’d first joined the firm the summer before, he’d thought her friendly, if a bit eager to connect. Not until after Zanny remarked upon what she perceived as inappropriate interest on Tracy’s behalf did John start to wonder himself.
He was a big enough man to admit that it had been flattering at first, to think that he would appeal to someone as attractive as Tracy. But the flattery quickly passed into annoyance. He was constantly having to watch himself, what he said, and what he did, and he was starting to worry he would end up being the first man in Perry County to file a sexual harassment suit. A local coal operator his Uncle Jack was friends with had contacted John on a couple of occasions to try to entice him on board at his various enterprises. John was considering the offer. If not for his deep loyalty to Dave Hopper, who’d taken a chance on him straight out of school and allowed him to provide for his family, John would have already taken the other job.
“I need to ask you something before you leave.” Tracy stepped inside and closed his door halfway. “It’s about the oil lease property. Do you have the file handy?”
Eyeing her and the door, John repressed a frustrated sigh and laid his jacket down. “Sure. What do you need to know?” He went to the row of filing cabinets on the other side of the room and got the file. When he turned to hand it to her, he backed up quickly, hitting the hard metal. Tracy was standing less than an arm’s length away, and her dress was unbuttoned to her waist, half off her body.
“What the holy hell are you doing?”
“Come on, Campbell. You know good and well what I’m doing. I’m just helping you get a little closer to something you want,” she whispered. Before he could react, she slapped the file out of his hand and threw her arms around his neck, pressing against him hard. Her mouth was on his in a split second, aggressively biting at his lips.
John tried to back up, but he couldn’t go any farther. He frantically reached for her arms, debating with himself for a split second whether this was a situation in which he should be gentle or use force. Deciding on the latter, he forced her arms down and shoved her away. She reached back out to him with a triumphant gleam in her eyes, then looked over her shoulder toward the door.
“Oh, dear. Looks like we’re caught.”
When John dragged his eyes off her to see what she was looking at, he thought his heart was going to stop, because there, in the sliver of space where the door was still open, looking utterly devastated, was Zanny.
It was a body- and mind-numbing experience, having her worst fears realized in front of her very eyes. Somewhere deep inside, she was angry. She knew she was. But just then, all she felt was cold and numb.
She didn’t say anything. She simply turned and walked back down the hall, past the receptionist, the other accountants, and John’s boss. She didn’t look at any of them and didn’t utter a word, just kept walking. When she hit the double glass door, it wouldn’t open, and the force of the impact nearly toppled her.
She laughed at herself. “Stupid Zanny, try the other side.” That door was unlocked and opened easily. The early evening air washed over her, the scent of rain clinging to it, and she thought about how much she liked to listen to the rain from the back porch of the new house.
That emotion was a little too close to the surface, and she dug her nails into the palm of her hand until it hurt, suppressing the feeling
s.
“Zanny, wait!” John called frantically from behind her. She didn’t stop, just kept walking toward the parking lot.
“Wait, damn it. Let me explain.” He grabbed her arm, whirling her around. The look on his face as her palm came up and connected with his cheek would have been funny if the situation hadn’t been so damned tragic.
Sneering, she looked him over from head to toe. “At least wipe the slut’s lipstick off your face first.” Wrenching her arm free, she got in to her car. She locked the door, then realized she needed her keys to start the car. She started digging in her purse.
“Zanny, please. It wasn’t what you think. Sweetheart, you don’t need to be driving right now. Please unlock the door.”
“Damned keys always go to the bottom,” she muttered, biting her lip hard as tears welled in her eyes. You can’t do that, you stupid girl, she thought. You have to get home before you can fall apart. Her hand closed around the keys, and she almost laughed.
Ignoring John’s pleas, she started the engine and backed up, then carefully pulled out onto the road and headed for home.
Chapter Sixteen
“John Campbell, what the Sam Hill is going on here?” Dave Hopper’s voice boomed as John stood, staring after Zanny’s vanishing taillights. When the other man clamped his hand on John’s shoulder, John spun around. Several of his coworkers, including Tracy, were watching from the doorway.
When he spotted her, standing there, trying to look innocent, his temper soared. He didn’t bother moderating his tone or his words. He raised his arm and pointed at Tracy. “You did that deliberately. You knew she was coming, and you did it deliberately. What the hell kind of game are you playing? She’s my wife. Do you know what she thinks now?”
