A Journey's End

by Ann Christopher

  “There are five of you, as you well know.”

  “—And you can have coffee with one of the others. I’ve got unpacking to finish, and then I need to—”

  That was when Mama pursed her lips, drew herself up to her full height of four-eleven, with heels, and gave him the narrow-eyed look that told him his full name was coming:

  “James Anderson Harper. You will come with me.” For emphasis, she put one hand on a hip and pointed at him with the index finger of the other. He’d had more than his share of that pointed index finger over the years and didn’t like seeing it again. “Right now. Don’t make me crawl over that counter and grab your ear.”

  So he’d caved. Sulking and muttering, he’d hung the Back in Five sign on the door, locked up, left Frank in charge, and trailed his mother next door, to Java Nectar.

  The second he crossed the threshold, he knew, in the inexplicable but unerring way he knew in his bones that it was going to rain or not on a given day, that his life was about to change, and change big.

  The place was cheery and crowded, with jazz unobtrusively playing in the background. Open. Comfortable and welcoming in that way you feel when you go for dinner at an old friend’s place, and you don’t have to dress up, bring a bottle of wine, send a follow-up thank-you note, or do anything other than have a seat, mellow out with some good company, food and drink, and be yourself.

  A young boy wearing shorts bounced up to them when they walked in. Bright-eyed and gap-toothed, with a short and sleek cap of black curls and dimples grooving through his chipmunk cheeks as he smiled at them, he was clearly Java Nectar’s self-appointed greeter, a job he took seriously.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Harper,” he said, enunciating in his best professional voice. “How are you today?”

  James’s mother beamed down at him and shook his small hand. “I’m wonderful, Noah. And how are you?”

  Noah scowled at her. “How did you know it was me?”

  Mama laughed. “Because you have the mole on your forehead—right there—and your brother doesn’t.”

  Brother?

  Just then, another little boy hurried over, his arms wide and his expression outraged. This one wore a blue shirt to the other’s green, but they were clearly identical twins.

  “Noah!” he cried. “I’m the greeter! Not you!”

  “I can greet too,” Noah replied smugly.

  “No, you can’t!” The other twin, who did not take kindly to this encroachment on his territory, got in his brother’s face. “You hand out menus!”

  Noah pouted. “I’m tired of menus.”

  “Well, it’s your job!” his twin reminded him.

  “Hello, Jonah,” James’s mom said kindly to the newcomer. “How are—”

  Evidently, this was the wrong thing to say.

  “No!” Jonah said, violently shaking his head. “I have to greet you! You have to go out and come in again so I can greet you! It’s my job!”

  “Well, I already did it,” Noah gloated.

  That one—Noah—was big on stirring the pot, James decided.

  He liked that kid.

  He liked both of them.

  Looking over the tops of their heads, he grinned at his mother, who grinned back.

  World War III, meanwhile, was about to break out. Jonah, who had the makings of a union boss, decided to take his issue to management. “Mommy?” he screeched, running to the counter. “Mommy!”

  “Jonah Bryant Lowe,” replied a stern female voice.

  James stilled because he knew—he knew—even before he saw the voice’s owner, both that this woman was the reason his mother had dragged him to Java Nectar. What was more, Mama had been right to do so, because she was definitely his flavor—at least physically.

  He only had a side view, but it was a great view. A. Great. View.

  Medium height. Big butt. Wide hips tapering to toned calves beneath the hem of her summery dress. Sandals that revealed pretty feet with toes polished red.

  Hands on her hips, she marched over to her wayward sons and bent at the waist to glare at them.

  Yeah, James thought, trying to keep it discreet in front of his mother. The woman had a killer ass.

  “Keep your eyes in your head, boy,” Mama murmured.

  James flushed. Sparing his mother a sidelong glare, he asked a question that suddenly seemed urgent: “What’s her name?”

  “Miranda,” his mother answered, and he heard the smile in her voice even if he didn’t see it. He was too busy waiting with rapt attention for the chance to see Miranda’s face close up.

  “If you keep yelling,” Miranda snapped at Jonah, “all our customers are going to walk out on us and you won’t have anyone to greet. And then I will fire you. Is that what you want?”

  Jonah’s face slackened with stark fear. “No, Mommy! Don’t fire me!”

  “Are you finished yelling?”

  Jonah nodded. “Yeah. I’m done. I’m done.”

  “Noah Edward Lowe?” Miranda said. “If you keep stealing your brother’s job, guess what you’re going to have to do?”

  Noah froze, looking guilty. “Not ...sweep the floor,” he said, keeping his voice low, as though saying it in his normal voice would unleash horror upon the universe.

  “Sweep the floor,” Miranda replied gravely. “Now get out of here.”

  The boys, not needing to be told twice, tore off through the tables and disappeared through the flapping door into the kitchen.

  James’s mother nudged him in the ribs. “Remind you of anyone you know?”

  “Yeah.” James nodded, his attention divided between fond memories of wrongdoing (the time he stapled Ethan’s pajama bottoms to the sheets while Ethan was sleeping came to mind) and Miranda, whose face he was dying to see. “Me and my knuckleheaded brothers.”

  Mama said something else—something about liking a woman who knew how to handle rambunctious boys—but it didn’t register because his entire being, down to the last subatomic particle in every cell in his body, was riveted on Miranda.

  Nodding with grim satisfaction, she wiped her hands on the end of her plain white apron and turned to face James’s mother.

  “Sorry, Ada.” Miranda had a wry smile and the kind of suppressed laughter in her voice that hinted at a sharp sense of humor. Which was probably the only thing that kept her sane as the single mother of twin seven-year-olds. “I’ve been trying to civilize them, but I can only work on one thing at a time. This week, it’s flushing the toilet after they use it. I’m going to make not scaring off the customers next week’s priority, though, so please come back again.”

  His mother chuckled. “You don’t need to apologize to me, Randi. If there’s one thing I understand, it’s raising boys.”

  “I’ve already met—let’s see if I can get this right,” she said, ticking the names off on her fingers, “Ethan, Isaiah and Edward. Daniel’s in California, so this must be—” Miranda turned to James for the first time and their gazes connected— “oh.”

  That about summed it up, James thought. Oh.

  Or, as he was thinking, holy shit.

  He lapsed into one of those eerie out-of-body experiences where certain things, like his mother, the other customers, and social niceties like not staring, for example, fell away from his world, and certain other things remained—only in sharper focus.

  Things like Miranda’s gorgeous brown eyes and the way they widened infinitesimally as she looked at him. And the way the sweet apples of her cheeks reddened the longer they stared at each other. And the way her lush mouth, which was plump and pouty and had a dimple bracketing the right side, held the shape of that breathless oh, even after she’d stopped saying it.

  And then of course there was the way something hot and urgent roared to life inside him, replacing the cold emptiness that had filled him to overflowing since Joy died.

  Lust?

  Yeah, no question.

  But it wasn’t plain old, garden-variety lust.

  Th
is lust was in an amped-up, steroid-drenched category all by itself. Which was a problem, because he was broken and she was a single mother. That made her, by definition, a vulnerable woman. Anyone with half a brain knew that the two of them could never hook up—especially not in a tiny town the size of Journey’s End, where all the residents knew each other’s business. Plus, Open Sky and Java Nectar were right next door from each other, so it wasn’t like he and Miranda could avoid each other if things between them crashed and burned.

  And yet . . .

  “You’re James,” Miranda said, recovering first and extending her hand. He took it, reveling in the softness of her skin, the direct warmth of her smile and the strength of her grip. “Your mother’s told me all about you. She says you’re her favorite son.”

  If James’s emotions hadn’t been in free fall, he would’ve smiled. Everyone who knew his mother knew that she spoke of each of her five sons the same way. But a crippling paralysis had him in its grip, and that led to awkwardness, and that led to . . .

  A crisp nod. “Miranda.”

  It was all he could do.

  Whereupon his mother swooped in and smoothed over his rough edges the same way she’d been doing since he was in grade school.

  “Did I mention that James is shy?”

  “Really, woman?” James asked, recovering enough to shoot his mother a sidelong glare. “And you wonder why I don’t come visit often enough?”

  Miranda grinned. “Maybe he’s an introvert, Ada. That’s different from being shy. Maybe he just likes to get the lay of the land before he opens his mouth. Maybe he’s the quiet, thoughtful type.” Her gaze locked in on his again, and the warmth of it was like basking in the shower after a day of chopping wood in the bitter cold.

  Easy. Relaxing. Wonderful.

  They stared at each other for one breath ...two breaths . . .

  His mother walked away, taking her smug smile with her as she melted into the non-Miranda part of the world.

  Miranda blinked and gestured vaguely in his mother’s direction. “Mothers are good at putting their kids on the spot.”

  “Mine is, yeah,” he agreed, not taking his eyes off Miranda.

  “Well, I’m all for more silence in the world. My kids make enough noise for five or six people.”

  He felt one corner of his mouth lift in the beginning of a smile, but Joy had taken most of his smiles with her when she died, and he was out of the habit. “Good to know.”

  “So . . .” She ran a hand over her wavy black hair, and he watched her, wishing he could do the same. He wanted his hands full of that dark silk as he tipped her face up, angling it for his kiss. “Are you a coffee or tea person?”

  He snapped himself out of his thoughts, which were streaking past PG-13–rated and headed for a solid R. “Coffee. The blacker, the better.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  He nodded, fumbling around for something to say that had nothing to do with the weather. “Sorry about my mother. Sounds like she’s forced you to listen to our life stories.”

  Another smile. “It’s okay. I got her back by whining about how boys don’t think they need to shower or flush the toilet. Ever.”

  That made him laugh, which was surprising enough. More surprising was the way his tongue loosened up, allowing him to banter, which was something he rarely did with people he hadn’t known for five or more years.

  “I did learn how to flush and shower. For the record.”

  But she was staring at him with an arrested look, her color high and her eyes bright as her smile slowly faded.

  His smile slowly faded.

  He cleared his hoarse throat. “Your boys seem like good kids.”

  Mother’s pride lit up her face. “Yeah, well. I’m trying to civilize the little beasts. I’m going to give them another year or so before I decide whether to release them back into the wild or keep them.”

  “Have you thought about scouting? It helped me and my brothers.”

  “Yeah, actually. They were in the troop back home, and I’ve signed them up here.”

  He felt a kick of excitement low in his gut.

  “I’m one of the leaders.”

  One of her brows rose in a subtle challenge. “And are you any good?”

  “I’m great,” he replied, well aware that he was flirting for the first time in years.

  “We’ll have to see.” There was a sexy note in her voice now that made nerve endings tingle up his nape and across his scalp. “I hope they don’t make you want to turn in your badge.”

  “A couple little boys don’t scare me.”

  She laughed. The sound—throaty, unabashed—was a stimulant that went directly to his brain. “Brave words, young grasshopper.”

  “Hang on—you know Kung Fu?”

  “The TV series with David Carradine? Please. What kind of a mother would I be if I didn’t expose my impressionable sons to all the martial arts classics?”

  He eyed her with growing awe. “If you know anything about Bruce Lee—”

  “‘You have offended my family, and you have offended the Shaolin Temple.’“

  The fact that she knew these Bruce Lee lines from one of his favorite movies, Enter The Dragon, left him speechless. And a little light-headed.

  “Don’t underestimate me, young grasshopper,” she said, beaming as though she could see the debris field from his blown mind.

  “Trust me—I won’t.”

  “So, back to the scouts—I heard there’ll be fishing?”

  He nodded.

  “Great. The boys’ve always wanted to learn. They love outdoorsy stuff, but there wasn’t much to do in the city.”

  James wanted to be satisfied with this information and warned himself not to be nosy. But his mouth was already open and shooting off.

  “Where’s their father?”

  She hesitated. He gave himself a swift mental kick in the ass.

  “Back in Brooklyn with his new wife, the woman he left me for.” Another hesitation, followed by a wry smile and a shoulder shrug. “Who’s almost old enough to order a martini.”

  There it was, he realized. The worst pain of her life. It was all right there in her squared shoulders and hitched-up chin: her determination to move forward without bitterness and her absolute refusal to be pitied. Her eyes, on the other hand, were shadowed with unmistakable humiliation and vulnerability.

  Miranda’s near-fatal emotional wound, like his, had to do with the loss of a spouse. True, her spouse had left her for a younger woman, but loss was loss.

  He was suddenly filled with a dizzying jumble of emotions—including a scary urge to seek out and mangle some man he’d never met and a fierce gratitude that the punk was no longer in Miranda’s life.

  “Hmm,” he said, mindful of her pride. “No idea why he’d want to raise a third child when he’s already got twins on his plate, but ...Sounds like you’re better off without him.”

  Her eyes widened. “You introverts. When you do speak, it’s usually something good, isn’t it?”

  He inclined his head. “I strive.”

  “Miranda?” The woman running the register, who had a phone tucked between her ear and shoulder, gestured to Miranda. He and Miranda both started and looked around to see what the woman wanted. “The supplier’s on the phone. He wants to know what you decided about the Arabica beans.”

  “One second,” Miranda called.

  “So,” she said, ducking her head as she turned back to James. She shifted restlessly, making him wonder if she was as buzzed with adrenaline as he was. It thrummed through his body with such force it was a miracle his skin wasn’t vibrating. His attention dipped to her full lips, riveted by the way the corner of her mouth curled as she spoke. “You don’t talk much, you flush and shower, and you have a great mother.”

  “True.”

  “Well, then.” Eyes gleaming, she nodded with satisfaction. “You’re welcome anytime. We’ve got lots of black coffee.”

  The perfec
t response was right there, sitting on his tongue, ready and waiting to be said: I plan to be back—soon and often. But at some elusive point between when he opened his mouth and when his vocal cords began to vibrate with sound, a strange thing happened.

  His wedding ring, which was always on his left hand but rarely noticed, like his fingernails, made its presence known.

  It felt ...there.

  Noticeable.

  Almost ...heavier.

  The feeling was so bizarre that all he could do was cover the ring with the fingers from his right hand—honest to God, the ring felt like it was throbbing now, tightening like a blood pressure cuff—and give Miranda a crisp nod.

  “I might do that,” he said.

  This noncommittal answer made the light in her eyes flicker, then dim.

  “Well.” To her credit, she hung on to her polite smile. “Bye.”

  He watched her walk to the phone, feeling her loss the way he’d feel it if someone replaced the air he breathed with sulfur.

  His mother, who had, of course, been watching from a discreet distance, hurried back over, frown lines grooving between her brows.

  “Miranda’s great, isn’t she?” she asked brightly.

  He twisted his wedding band, staring after Miranda. His throat had turned into a solid knot of longing, guilt and fear. There was no way he could explain to his mother that he was, suddenly and fiercely, alive again.

  Mama, being Mama, tried again. She squeezed his forearm in that comforting way she had. “What happened, James? I could tell you liked her. I knew you would.”

  The fact that Mama seemed to think things were just that simple infuriated him.

  He freed his arm and kept his voice low. “What’re you trying to pull here?”

  She gave him the kindly smile, the one that plainly announced that, while he may be an adult now, she was still his mother and therefore understood things about his inner workings that still mystified him.

  “I’m trying to help you get over your fear,” she said.

  “I’m not afraid,” he’d told his mother that day, the same thing he’d said to Miranda a few minutes ago.

  A lie both times.

  The whole thing was ironic, considering he’d been so quick to tell Miranda that little boys didn’t scare him. Miranda, on the other hand? She scared him in a primal, down-to-his-bones way that froze him inside his skin and shamed him as a man.