This Heart of Mine

by Brenda Novak

  “Fine?” he repeated. “That’s it? I haven’t seen her around town in years.”

  Jacob scowled at him. “You know what she’s like, Dad.”

  Phoenix cleared her throat. “She’ll be better now that I’m home. I’ll see to it. And she won’t bother you or Jacob. I’ll make sure of that, too.”

  “How can she bother us if she can’t leave the house?” Jacob asked, glaring at his father. “Has she bothered us so far?”

  “I’ll handle this,” Riley said, but Phoenix felt the need to chime in. She couldn’t allow Riley to think Jacob was supporting her side of any argument. Riley held her heart in his hand because he controlled what she wanted most—a relationship with Jacob. So, first of all, she had to protect her relationship with him.

  “Your father’s right. She can be...an embarrassment. I remember what it was like when...when I was in high school. But she’s, um, well, like you say, she doesn’t go anywhere, so I highly doubt she’ll be an issue.” Except for when he came to her place, but she’d figure out how to handle that if and when it happened.

  Obviously annoyed that his father was being so protective, Jacob grumbled, “I’m not worried about it.”

  She hoped that was true. He had enough to cope with just being her son. Not many other kids had to live with the stigma of having their mother labeled a murderer. “I hear you’re a talented baseball player,” she said, eager to change the subject.

  This elicited a shy smile—one that revealed how very handsome and charismatic her son was. He looked even more like his father than she’d initially thought, with those amber-colored eyes and his nearly black hair.

  “I like to play,” he said.

  “It’s really something to be the starting varsity pitcher as a junior,” she told him. “Baseball’s a big deal around here.”

  Riley’s mood seemed to improve as he gave his son’s shoulder a little shove. “Last week he almost pitched a no-hitter.”

  Jacob lifted his eyebrows. “Almost but not quite.”

  “The season’s young,” Riley responded.

  Phoenix loved the pride in Riley’s voice. She felt that same pride. But right now, carrying on this conversation was a chore. For one thing, except for a few close friends she’d made in prison, she’d kept to herself. She didn’t consider herself particularly entertaining. For another, she just wanted to sit and stare, memorize all the details of her son’s face. The pictures she’d been sent had been far and few between and hadn’t done her boy justice. He’d had braces on in the last one, which had come in a Christmas card two years ago. Small effort though it required on Riley’s part, she was grateful to him for sending that. She still had both the card and the photo. They were among the scant belongings she’d brought home from prison.

  “Do you have plans to play in college?” she asked.

  “Definitely,” he replied. “I’ve got a few universities interested in me. Great ones, too. I’m hoping for a scholarship.”

  He had so much going for him, so much to look forward to. She owed Riley for that. He’d done a great job with their son. “How exciting!” she said. “I’m sure you’ll get one.”

  The waitress came to take their order, so Phoenix quickly added up what the tab would be, after they asked for orange juice with their meals. She didn’t want to embarrass herself when it came time to pay by running short. “Just coffee for me,” she said to be safe.

  “That’s all you want?” Jacob asked.

  “I don’t usually have much for breakfast.” Hungry though she was, she was too nervous to eat, anyway.

  “No wonder you’re so small. Most of the girls in school are twice as big as you,” he said. “And some of them aren’t finished growing.”

  “I might be small, but I’m strong,” she teased, flexing one arm.

  “I heard. You got into a few fights in—”

  “Let’s not start with that.” When Riley interrupted, her son flushed and fell silent.

  “It’s okay, he can say what he wants,” she told Riley before answering Jacob. “I was forced to defend myself, but...I managed.” Sometimes better than others. It always depended on how many people jumped her at once.

  “What happened?” Jacob asked.

  During which incident? She supposed the one that had left the scar on her lip. She didn’t want to get into what life was like on the inside, but she also didn’t want him to feel there were subjects he had to avoid.

  “The women in that prison could be...territorial,” she said. “There were times I had to fight or I’d be picked on for the rest of my stay, you know? I’m sure you’ve seen that type of behavior in school.” The fact that she was fighting for her life had given her little choice in the matter, but she didn’t want to make it sound quite so dire.

  Jacob wrinkled his nose, clearly doubtful. “So you didn’t start the fight?”

  “Would you start a fight if you were my size?” she asked with a laugh, hoping she could get him to smile.

  He didn’t, but some of his doubt seemed to slip away. “No. I can’t even imagine how you defended yourself.”

  “I told you.” She winked to cover a reservoir of much deeper feeling. “I’m stronger than I look.”

  He studied her for a few seconds. “Is that what those scars are from?”

  Phoenix’s tongue automatically sought the one on her lip. She’d gotten it just before she was due to be released two years ago—the cut and twenty stitches. The scar had come later. “Yeah.”

  “From a fist?” he clarified.

  “No, it was a razor blade.” She shifted in her seat, conscious that Riley couldn’t approve of her describing such a gruesome scene. But she wanted to satisfy Jacob’s curiosity so they could move on. She didn’t want him feeling she’d brushed his questions aside.

  He frowned at her. “Must’ve hurt.”

  It had, but the pain hadn’t been the worst of it. Those women, with the help of one guard who’d always had it in for her, had purposely set her up. She’d been blamed for starting the fight, which had added more than two years to her sentence. That had to be why Jacob was questioning her so carefully. He must’ve been told she was a troublemaker when she didn’t get out.

  Although that day had been one of the darkest of her whole life, Phoenix shrugged so he wouldn’t have to know it. “Not too bad. Anyway, I’d like to see you pitch sometime, if you wouldn’t mind having me at a game.” She waved a hand before he could respond. “I’ll sit on the visitors’ side, so don’t worry about that.”

  Confusion created lines in his forehead. “Why would you sit on the visitors’ side?”

  Because she couldn’t imagine he’d want a mother who’d been in prison for murder showing up where people might recognize who she was and connect them. “I’d rather not cause a stir.”

  She looked to Riley for confirmation. He’d used the stigma of her crime as one of the reasons Jacob would be better off without her, so she was hoping to reassure him that she wouldn’t make things difficult. But he didn’t comment one way or the other, didn’t say she couldn’t come as she feared he might. He covered his mouth for a few seconds, rubbed his jaw, then straightened his silverware. It was Jacob who insisted she could sit wherever she liked. But a polite boy would say that.

  “Okay, just...just let me know when you have a game.” She figured if he never came forward with that information, she’d have her answer as to whether he preferred she stay away from him in public.

  “How am I supposed to let you know?” he asked. “Do you have a home phone or a cell?”

  She didn’t. She couldn’t afford either. She had far too many other necessities to buy first. “Not yet. But I have a laptop, and I learned that Black Gold Coffee has free Wi-Fi. I could set up a Facebook page, and you could message me that way—with your father’s permission.” He could also get hold of her through her mother, who lived in a separate trailer on the same property, but she hesitated to suggest that, given Riley’s disapproval of Lizzie.<
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  “You have a laptop?” he asked.

  “I do. It was a gift from one of the correctional officers when I was released. It’s an old one, but...it works.”

  “So you’ll friend me? You know how to do that?”

  She sipped more coffee. The caffeine was making her jittery on an empty stomach, but it helped to have something to do with her hands. “I took some computer classes when I was... I took some classes.”

  “Oh.”

  “What are your plans now that you’re home?” Riley asked. “Are you looking for a job or...?”

  “Not quite yet,” she replied. “I have to finish cleaning out the trailer where I’m living before I do anything else.” She almost expounded on how bad it was, how unsanitary. Her mother’s hoarding was worse than ever. But she caught herself. If her primary goal was to provide a room for Jacob that Riley would deem safe—in case her son ever agreed to stay with her for a night or two—it wouldn’t be wise to regale his father with the gritty details. When she’d first begun cleaning it up, the trailer hadn’t been fit for pigs. Although it was a lot better now, it would be spotless by the time she was done.

  “Where will you apply after that?”

  “Anywhere there’s an opening.” Riley had also pointed out how difficult it would be for her to make a living in Whiskey Creek, a town of only two thousand. The school had allowed her to graduate in spite of the fact that she’d missed the last three weeks of her senior year, but a high school diploma wouldn’t do much to offset her criminal record. She hadn’t mentioned the business she’d started while she was still incarcerated. She had no idea if it would succeed. But she’d established a small income making leather bracelets for men and boys. The woman who’d given her the laptop, Cara Brentwell, had been putting the bracelets up on Etsy.com and eBay for the past three years. That was where, most recently, she’d gotten the bulk of the money she’d been sending to Jacob. She and Cara had split the profits but, as a free woman, she no longer needed Cara’s help.

  “I, um, have a small gift for you,” she told Jacob. “Don’t get excited, it’s nothing big. You don’t even have to wear it if you don’t like it. I just wanted to see if...you know, maybe you’d think it was cool.”

  She reached into her bag and pulled out the leather pouch she’d put the bracelet in instead of wrapping it. Somehow that seemed more masculine than paper and bow.

  “Thanks,” he said as he accepted it.

  She didn’t say that she’d made it. She didn’t want to give him or anyone else any reason not to like it. “If you’d rather open it later,” she began, but he had his hand inside and took it out before she could finish.

  “What is it?” Riley asked.

  “A bracelet,” Jacob piped up, and the pleasant tone of his voice was slightly reassuring. He didn’t sound as if he hated it.

  “So you’ve seen them before?” she said, trying to gauge whether he was just trying to salvage her feelings.

  “Yeah, but none quite like this.” He turned it over in his man-size hands. Fortunately, the braided leather she’d embellished with a piece of petrified wood that was carved in the shape of a bird—a play on her name that she wasn’t sure he’d understand—fastened with a tie so it couldn’t be too small. “It’s awesome. Where’d you get it?”

  The waitress arrived with their food, and Phoenix pretended she hadn’t heard the question. Jacob became so distracted putting on the bracelet, and then eating, that he didn’t pursue an answer.

  From there the conversation became a bit stilted. Phoenix asked about his grades, expressed pride that he was doing so well and encouraged him to continue. Then she asked if he had a girlfriend. He said he didn’t, that he was interested in a few different girls, but mostly just as friends, and then the conversation lagged again. It would’ve been more natural to talk to Riley, too, but Phoenix was careful not to direct a single question to him. She didn’t want him to worry that she might still have feelings for him. Sometimes their brief relationship played out in her mind, usually late at night. Those memories were some of the best she had. But she told herself they continued to matter simply because she hadn’t shared the same kind of intimacy with any other person. She’d been barely eighteen when she went to prison and, although she’d been approached by various male guards over the years, which some of her fellow inmates resented, she’d never even kissed anyone besides Riley. One guard sent her a few letters after he quit his job at the prison, but she never responded. He lived in the Bay Area, and she’d planned to return to Whiskey Creek; she’d realized all along that she’d have a very brief period to get to know her son before he reached adulthood. She didn’t want to waste time on a man, especially considering how fickle and unreliable they could be, judging by the speed with which Riley had fallen in and out of love with her.

  Even without being addressed, Riley added a comment here and there to support what Jacob said. Whenever that happened, Phoenix would turn a polite smile on him to acknowledge his remark. But she kept her attention on her son, which worked fine—until the check came. Then she had to engage Riley because he tried to pluck it off the corner of the table.

  Thankfully, she managed to grab it before he could. She wouldn’t allow him to buy her a meal, to buy her anything. This was a matter of pride, what little pride she could salvage, anyway. She’d extended the invitation; she’d pay the tab. Anything else might make him believe she was out to get something from him when, other than his blessing for her to see Jacob, she definitely wasn’t.

  “I don’t mind,” he said, as if he wasn’t sure whether to insist while she counted out her money.

  Even with the tip, she had enough—thank God. “It’s my treat, but I appreciate the offer,” she said firmly.

  Leaving the money on the table, she slid out of the booth.

  “Breakfast was good,” Jacob said.

  A jolt of hope and happiness shot through her that he seemed to have enjoyed himself. The path ahead of them would not be smooth, but she’d survived her first breakfast with Jacob and didn’t feel she was about to fall apart. It probably helped that she’d had a lot of practice with disappointment. She hoped the next encounter would be easier, and the next even easier and so forth. She had to start somewhere.

  “It was my pleasure,” she told him.

  Although she tried to lag behind, they waited for her to precede them. She didn’t own a car, which meant she’d be walking five miles to the barren spot of land her mother had inherited from her own parents. Lizzie had two old trailers on that property—the one she’d filled so full of junk she could no longer live in it, which was now Phoenix’s home, and the one she occupied herself, with her five dogs, two hamsters and a parrot.

  Once they got outside, she stepped out of the way so they could move past her and into the parking lot. “Thank you for meeting me.”

  Riley squinted against the bright spring sunshine and gazed around, as if he expected someone to be there to pick her up. “How are you getting home?”

  She didn’t answer that question directly for fear he’d take it as a hint that she wanted a ride. “Oh, don’t worry about me. I’ve got it covered.”

  “You’ve got what covered?”

  “Aren’t we talking about a way home?”

  “Someone’s coming to pick you up, then? When will they be here? Do you need to use my phone?”

  Now that he’d pinned her down, she had to tell the truth. She couldn’t use the cell he offered. She had no one to call. “There’s no need to bother anyone. It’s such a nice day I’m happy to walk.”

  He glanced down at her strappy sandals. “You can make it that far in those?”

  “I made it here,” she said. “They’re very comfortable.” Whether that was true or not wasn’t important. They were all she owned.

  He didn’t seem convinced, but when she waved and turned to go, he started toward his truck. Jacob was the one who called her back.

  “Mom?”

  Phoenix’s
heart hit her chest with one giant thud. He hadn’t addressed her as anything yet, let alone Mom. She hadn’t expected to hear him say that, not right away, especially since she’d given him permission to use her first name instead. “Yes?” She hoped her voice didn’t sound as strangled to him as it did to her.

  “You told me I could say anything.”

  “Jacob.” Riley spoke their son’s name as a warning, but Phoenix ignored that, along with his frown.

  “You can. It’s absolutely okay.”

  “No matter what it is?”

  She swallowed hard. She hadn’t expected the questions to begin quite this soon. “Of course.”

  Jacob looked at his father, but his inner turmoil was obviously driving him to disregard the quick shake of Riley’s head. “Did you do it?” he asked. “Because I have to hear that answer from you. I want to know the truth after wondering about it all these years.”

  She didn’t mind him asking. She longed to tell him the truth. But it would’ve been much easier to discuss this some quiet night when Riley wasn’t with them, because she knew Riley would doubt every word she said. She was afraid he might even scoff at her denial, if not in front of her, then once he and Jacob got in the truck.

  Still, now that she had the chance to tell Jacob she was innocent, she had to take it. Kids didn’t always wait for the best time or place, and if she missed this opportunity, maybe she’d never have another. Not like this, with her son so...open.

  Tempted to grab his arms or do something else to impress on him just how fervent she was, she stepped forward. But she was still afraid that coming on too strong would scare him away. So she stopped there and lowered her voice for emphasis. “I didn’t do it. I swear I didn’t do it.”

  “But you were driving the car! You had to have done it.” Although he sounded argumentative, he spoke as if he wanted her to persuade him otherwise, and she appreciated that more than he could ever know.

  “There was someone else in the car, Jacob. Have you heard about this?” He must’ve been told bits and pieces over the years. But he hadn’t even been born when the trial took place, and he would’ve been ten or twelve before he was old enough to hear what had happened. That meant that whoever told him the story had very likely simplified an incident that was over a decade old. And once Jake entered his teens, maybe he felt it was a subject his father didn’t want to touch, so he didn’t push.